SEDRO-WOOLLEY, Wash. -- Schools in the Sedro-Woolley School District will get some upgrades if the district moves forward with a $79.1 million bond proposal that would pay for work at every school in the district.
A 17-person facilities improvement committee recommended Monday that the district ask voters to approve the bond proposal to upgrade existing facilities, add more classroom and common area space, and provide much-needed facelifts for many of the buildings.
"Every building and every kid in this district is going to benefit from this," said committee co-chair and former school board member Tim Howland.
The recommendation was made to Sedro-Woolley School District Superintendent Phil Brockman, who will work on the proposal with the school board before it is presented to voters, potentially in February.
The committee spent the past year visiting each of the district's schools and assessing needs, district Executive Director of Business and Operations Brett Greenwood said. In addition, he said parents were asked to fill out surveys about their biggest priorities.
At the top of the list was replacing Evergreen Elementary School.
Since the school was built in the early 1970s using an open building concept -- meaning few interior walls -- the district has added temporary walls to create classrooms, added portables and a building to house restrooms, and now brings bottled water into the school because of discoloration to the water caused by the building's old pipes.
"The way that (Evergreen is) set up ... when you have kids marching through different classrooms (to get to their own) you can imagine the disruption that causes on a daily basis," Howland said.
Over the years, the district has made repairs to all its buildings, Howland said. But some things, such as the plumbing at Evergreen, have outlived their usefulness and would be more costly to continue to repair than to replace.
"It's expensive and we'd still end up with a school that isn't very good," Howland said. "The open building concept that was used at that time was a poor design."
Because of interior walls that have been added, the school's heating and cooling systems don't function properly.
"Students, when they're learning, they also need that physical environment," said committee member Kathryn Longfellow. "How can a kid learn if the inside of that building is 90 degrees? That just doesn't work."
The preliminary plan would be to build an 87,000-square-foot, three-story building between Cascade Middle School and the current Evergreen Elementary School building. The new school would house about 600 students, said architect Bob Harthorne of Harthorne Hagen Architects.
That project would cost about $40 million, the committee's numbers show.
The committee recommends keeping the current school building in order to repurpose it.
The next largest cost in the bond proposal is $11 million for facility preservation -- items such as new roofs, steam boilers and windows.
"We owe it to the public to take care of the buildings they paid for," Howland said. "If we let these buildings deteriorate, it ruins their value and we end up having to replace the building but it has other impacts as well."
Each of the district's schools would have maintenance paid for through the bond.
In some schools, such as Cascade Middle School -- which opened in 2013 after voters approved a $17 million bond in 2010 for its construction -- the maintenance will be minor. Cascade is set for $135,000 in repairs, most of which would go toward its roof.
"When we're not maintaining, we get early deterioration," Howland said. "By putting these things off, we're going to still replace them, we're just going to pay a lot for them. The economy was not good for us in the past bonds and we did think about maintenance, but we had bigger concerns."
At other schools, the repairs will be more significant.
All of the district's seven elementary schools, with the exception of Clear Lake Elementary School, will see additions made to either their cafeterias or gymnasiums.
A nearly 60-year-old steam boiler at the high school that has cost the district about $1 million to repair in recent years is also set to be replaced.
"A lot of these things that are being asked for are things that parents have been asking for for years," said board member Christina Jepperson.
Earlier this year, Greenwood said, Washington State University's Energy Office completed a grant-funded study of the district's facilities and found that several were in need of improvements.
Evergreen, Greenwood said, received a "poor" rating.
"As a district, we need to do something about that," he said. "Some of our schools are reaching a critical status here."
Also included in the bond proposal is about $2 million for the district to use for future acquisition of property should the district need to continue to expand.
Should the proposal as presented Monday be approved by voters, property owners can expect to pay $1.62 per $1,000 of assessed value for the bond.
However, because of new laws regarding state funding, taxpayers will pay less in property taxes to the district whether the bond is approved or not.
In 2018, taxpayers can expect to pay $7.43 per $1,000 in assessed property value, Greenwood said.
If the bond is approved, that number would decrease to $6.59 per $1,000 beginning in 2019, when payments on the bond would begin.
If it is not approved, the number would decrease to $4.81 per $1,000 in 2019.
The district has been told not to rely on state construction assistance funds, also called state-match funds, for any bond proposal.
Those dollars are tied up in the state's capital budget, which has not been approved. Should that remain the case, districts with current construction projects, such as Anacortes and Mount Vernon, will be forced to either find funding elsewhere or cut back on their projects.
"The state has backed out over funding," Greenwood said. "The advice we've been given is to front funds (because) there's a chance that state match will not be available."
