By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
Amy Skirvin was surprised seven years ago when she arrived to be the principal of Waldport Middle/High School.
Financed with a Lincoln County School District bond, the school had moved out of downtown Waldport’s tsunami zone. Everything was new from a 2011 voter-approved bond – classrooms, cafeterias, libraries, gyms and offices.
But there was one thing missing.
“I was shocked we didn’t have an auditorium,” Skirvin told the school district’s board this month. “Not having an auditorium is like having a football team without a field.”
The school board hopes to change that next May.
While there are still key decisions to made, the board is looking hard at a $73 million bond to build three high school auditoriums, remodel all restrooms and locker rooms, install all-weather fields and playgrounds at elementary schools, and tackle dozens of security, technology and maintenance projects throughout the district’s 11 schools and nine other buildings.
The projects are being considered by school board members and district staff as they work through a long list for a bond it expects to put before voters in May.
The bond – plus a potential $6 million state grant – would replace an expiring $63 million bond approved by a wide margin in 2011. School board members and administrators are trying to balance the cost of new projects to keep the current tax rate — 65 cents per $1,000 assessed property value – so that property owners would not see an increase in their 2026 bills.
The bond’s 65 cent tax rate – the current or possible new one – costs the owner of property assessed at $300,000 approximately $195 a year. While the board is pondering the length of the proposed bond, most of its scenarios has it lasting 15 years – the same as the current, expiring one.
That’s the same idea – a replacement bond to replace an expiring one — that Oregon Coast Community College used in May to help win passage of a $33 million bond to build a trades education center.
Voter approved bonds can be used for large-cost projects, such as new construction, purchasing property or other assets, remodeling, large maintenance or repair projects, furnishing, equipping buildings, technology upgrades, curriculum, and classroom improvements. A bond cannot be used for operating costs, salaries, retirement benefits or other expenses.
District leaders have been studying plans for a bond for more than a year, starting with a building-by-building walk-through with principals and surveying parents and the community. It also hired an architectural consulting firm for an outside look and to help refine projects and create a three-tiered priority list that now contains 76 projects.
“We still need to dial the list in,” Superintendent Majalise Tolan told the board at a Nov. 12 workshop. “There are a lot of things our schools need.”
During another board workshop Tuesday, Tolan said she’s working with building administrators and facilities director Rich Belloni to refine projects for each school and balance projects in the district’s north, central and south areas.
The district will also get the results of a public opinion poll Dec. 5.
As the list continues to be refined — including cost estimates for each project — the board will go over it again at its Dec. 10 meeting and plans to vote in January whether to proceed.
Tolan promised project cost estimates for the board’s December meeting “so we don’t go promise something we can’t deliver.”
Details, details
While the district needs some type of upgrades, repairs and maintenance at almost all its buildings, it does not need new schools. Because of demographic trends, housing issues and the competition from online or private schools, district enrollment is on a slow but steady decline from 5,550 students in 2018, to its current enrollment of 4,900 to a projected enrollment of 4,045 in nine years.
That means schools have adequate classroom space, demographic and architectural consultants told the district. But there is lot that can be done to improve learning spaces, increase school security and accessibility, and modernize plumbing, air systems and technology.
Plans also call for a complete re-do of all school bathrooms and locker rooms to help ensure more student privacy. Bath and locker rooms were the No. 1 issue on many student and staff lists, Tolan told the school board this month.
While all of those are important to maintain and improve the district’s current buildings, board members and administrators hope the addition of three 300-seat performance auditoriums will be the big, visible addition to entice voters to pass the bond.
The auditoriums would go at Waldport, Newport and Toledo high schools.
Taft Middle/High School uses a large cafeteria with the capability to convert it into a performance space, so other than upgrades to existing equipment one is not planned there. Tolan told the board Nov. 12 that Taft schools have received many upgrades through its yearly general fund and that staff there “understand we’re a big district with lots of needs.”
Belloni is racing to get cost estimates for the three auditoriums, but said at the Nov. 12 workshop they could be $10 million each.
The new auditoriums would have outside entrances so they could be used for community performances and events, something attractive to groups in Toledo, Newport and Waldport looking for those spaces, district officials said.
“We want to use them as much as possible,” Tolan said. “These types of facilities help make our buildings be a hub of the community.”
The Waldport and Newport auditoriums would be standalone buildings on those school campuses; the Toledo auditorium would be attached to the high school.
Tolan told the board this month that remodeling projects at Taft 7-12 helped revitalize the school’s drama and band programs.
“We have performers who are just as important as other activities,” she said.
District administrators and board members still have a lot of decisions to make – getting cost estimates so it can winnow the project list to keep the bond at $73 million. It also needs to set up a political action committee — it has a dormant one from 2011 and no citizen-led education foundation — to lead a campaign next spring.
“The polls will tell us a lot,” board chair Peter Vince said.
School, community benefit
Jody Hanna teaches theater arts at Newport High School. Her classroom is also used for school plays and performances but can only fit an audience of 60. The room is just off the school cafeteria, which also doubles as the concert venue for the school’s band.
Hanna is also artistic director for Coast Arts Productions, a community arts group which focuses on classes and performances involving youth and families. Its major production this year was “Music Man” at the always busy Newport Performing Arts Center.
The new auditorium, she believes, would greatly aid performing arts and music programs at the school and could also help the district attract statewide competitions that now occur mostly in the Willamette Valley or Portland areas. Local arts groups would also jump to use it, she said.
“I could see it used for a number of things,” Hanna said. “I would think there’s community support for it and the arts. We live in a community that’s very arts oriented.”
- Quinton Smith is the editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com