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NEWPORT — No air conditioning or sprinkler system. A heating system that leaks at least once a month and doesn’t function in some classrooms. Cracks, peeling and other signs of wear all over campus.
These are just a few of the issues that come with operating out of a 45-year-old school like Newport High School, district Superintendent Dave Smith said. After almost two years of facility studies, independent assessments, guidance from a 30-member community advisory committee and, most recently, a community survey, the Newport School District Board voted to place a $46.3 million bond measure on the February election ballot that will address these issues.
“We’re not doing this just because we want a shiny building,” Smith said. “We’re doing probably the most minimum amount we can at this time that we think can carry us forward for hopefully another 40 years.”
The Newport School District Board is proposing the bond at an estimated rate of $1.89 per $1,000 in assessed property value for up to 23 years. It requires a supermajority approval of at least 60% to pass, with the state expected to contribute an additional $17.7 million upon approval.
The district’s last bond, approved in 2004 and ending in 2023, was $6.6 million and funded reconstruction at Sadie Halstead Middle School after a fire.
“We’ve tried to find grants. We’ve tried to find anything we can through the state,” Smith said. “That’s the number one thing we do.”
At the top of the list of improvements are replacing Newport High School’s roof and heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.
Now 25 years old, the roof is made mostly of rubber, district maintenance director Scott Armstrong said. Though it functioned as intended for about 15 years, the roof has now surpassed the average 20-year lifespan of most roofs and is delaminating at the seams.
Moreover, only a couple companies based in Spokane can complete the repairs, which are costly. The roof also contributed to drainage issues that caused water damage to the main gym wall; the plywood installed by the main entrance is meant to divert that water.
“I spend more maintaining this roof than all the other roofs combined,” Armstrong said. Repairing leaks alone costs the district at least $15,000 a year.
Without a replacement, Armstrong warns that the roof will fail, forcing the district to move students away from the failure and maybe even leading to the school’s condemnation. If the roof failed now, repairs to it may not be completed due to certain temperature requirements.
“We’re trying to do this now so this building doesn’t get into a situation where it has to be condemned,” Smith said.
Similarly, most of the heating system is from the 1980s or ‘90s, with the exception of boilers that were replaced about 10 years ago. As a result, Armstrong said the school struggles to find parts such as fans or shafts that are either rare or must be specially manufactured due to their age. This is also costly for the district, as well as energy-inefficient — an issue exacerbated by the school’s ‘80s power system, which barely meets current energy demands.
Air handlers with issues have caused colder room temperatures in the winter. Without air conditioning, room temperatures rise to up to 85 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. The windows, which are as old as the school itself and not up to code, allow in cold and heat.
Other safety concerns come from the ventilation system, which Smith said often fails to filter out smoke, and the sprinklers, which only cover one area of the school.
“These are safety concerns,” Smith said. “But academically, we can do some things in that building to really improve the way that we also deliver instruction.”
Some classrooms are included on the list of improvements. These classrooms, which include traditional classrooms, science laboratories and the greenhouse, are at least 40 years old and did not adapt with modern technology or methods of instruction, Smith said. The same goes for a couple bathrooms, the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms and the showers.
Besides improvements to the main gym, the bond would fund an auxiliary gym to accommodate the district’s need for gym space. The main gym is used all week by not just students in Newport High School, but also in Sadie Halstead Middle School, Pend Oreille River School and Home Link, Smith said.
Newport High School needs storage as well, Smith said, with nowhere else to place certain equipment except in the halls.
“The bond also accounts for the equipment that you’re buying, like the desks, the chairs,” Smith said. “And where we can save money, we will.”
The commons, stage and band areas would also modernize, expanding seating for events and other programming. Open plans would be implemented in the library and a few classrooms for career and technical education courses. Offices would no longer be “all over the place,” Smith said, and student health and counseling areas would expand as well.
Also under discussion building a security vestibule at Newport High School, Smith and Armstrong said.
“The major areas that we’re doing the heavy replacement, obviously all of that’s going to be new lighting, new piping,” Smith said. The school would be rewired as well. “The real lighttouched areas probably wouldn’t be repiped, but the lighting would be new.”
Also funded by the bond would be improvements to outdoor areas on campus.
There is an issue with how the hill around the school handles drainage, Armstrong said. Drainage has corroded the tunnel by the main entrance; the concrete of the tunnel is “falling apart” and the doors are not shutting, and both are security concerns, Smith said.
Beyond those, the sidewalks and parking lot show cracks, and the former are not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Lights by the school are old and few, Smith said.
“You just notice the 45 years of just wear and tear,” Smith said.
Besides identifying these areas for improvement, the district has not commissioned schematics or otherwise progressed with any renovations, Smith said. That will only occur if the bond passes.
As such, the district does not yet have a cost breakdown for the bond, which the Newport School District Board set at $46.3 million per recommendations by NAC Architecture and OAC, a design and construction performance management firm.
Another firm, financial services partner D.A. Davidson, has advised the district that costs for construction will rise by $3.5–5 million each year. One projection estimated that the improvements could cost $45 million more in five years, almost doubling the bond amount.
“The longer we hold off, the more expensive it’s going to get,” Smith said.
Also more costly is separating the improvements. For example, Armstrong said the roof must be cut up to replace the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, so he suggests both be replaced at once. Otherwise, the district would have to repeat some work.
Furthermore, each school is only eligible to receive state assistance with a bond measure once every 30 years, Smith said. The district could use Newport High School’s eligibility on a reduced bond measure, but at another cost.
“If you do that, then you’ve used your state match money and you haven’t touched a lot of what needs to be fixed,” Smith said. “So, this is preventative measures that we’re taking.”
