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Newport High soon to complete summer renovations
NEWPORT — As a new school year begins this week, a couple projects at Newport High School are reaching their end.
The Newport School District worked through the summer to renovate two areas of Newport High School: the back field and part of the main entrance hillside.
Additionally, custodians have refinished and waxed the floors and cleaned and vacuumed the classrooms. They do so annually, Superintendent Dave Smith said, starting the day after students’ last day and finishing the week before their first day. They also complete any other projects identified by staff, including maintenance.
“So, we're putting our best foot forward,” Smith said.
No work had been performed on the field since Newport High School was built 45 years ago, Smith said. As such, the field was riddled with rolls and bumps, and a slope made a major portion of it unusable.
Starting in March, the district levelled the field, removing unusable softball infrastructure and filling areas with repurposed dirt. The district also replaced the main water line, as well as sprinklers that did not evenly cover the field. A fence was installed to divide the field into a sports complex, one section for football practice and the other for soccer practice.
The former section is complete, and the district recently applied a crabgrass herbicide to reseed and complete the latter section. Smith expects it to be ready in about a month.
“We still have some work to do back here,” Smith said. “But they haven't been able to fully access this whole field for years. And now it's a nice facility.”
The boys’ and girls’ soccer teams practice on the Stratton Elementary School field from 3–5:30 p.m., meaning younger players cannot practice until after 5:30 p.m. when those teams leave. When the Newport High School field is ready, older players will relocate there, allowing younger players to practice earlier.
“Besides it being a safety issue, which it really was, another reason for really wanting to get this done is because our youth programs are getting so big,” Smith said.
The project cost $45,000, and the district is expecting $15,000 from the Maws and Paws Booster Club, Smith said. The fence was $20,000, $10,000 of which was paid through the high school athletics fund. (The district applied for, but did not receive a grant from the Washington Turfgrass Seed Association.)
Smith thanked staff and volunteers for the labor they contributed to the field, saving the district thousands of dollars. Head football coach Mark Duxbury spent hundreds of hours digging, spreading dirt and reseeding. Jr Shepard, a friend of maintenance director Scott Armstrong, volunteered his own equipment and helped dig ditches.
“Our own guys did all the sprinkler system, every bit of it,” Smith said. “So really all of the labor has been in-house.”
Meanwhile, drainage issues with the main entrance hillside caused years of water damage to the gym, Smith said. Prior to the renovations, water came off the roof, went downhill and got into the gym. This not only damaged the gym walls, but also an access tunnel, creating security concerns.
“That’s why we've had to have that plywood up there, which doesn't look very good,” Smith said. The district will remove the plywood upon the project’s completion.
The hillside has been excavated, with new sprinklers installed. The district plans to add a barrier ensuring proper run-off, and a student-built concrete slab serving as an outdoor seating area.
A Healthy Kids grant partially funded repairs to the hillside, which Smith said cost $25,000. The grant also funded a divider curtain at the middle school gym, all the wall padding in the wrestling room, greenhouse supplies and equipment and some new scratch cooking equipment.
“We did all of the sprinkler work to redo the sprinkler system on that entire side hill,” Smith said.
These renovations come after the Newport School District’s proposal for a $46.3 million bond failed in the February election.
Estimated at a rate of $1.89 per $1,000 in assessed property value for up to 23 years, the bond failed 1,526-1,305 in February, with only 46.10% approving. To pass, the bond required a supermajority approval of at least 60%. Upon approval, the state was expected to contribute another $17.7 million.
The bond would have mainly funded the modernization of Newport High School. In addition to replacing roofing and the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system, renovations were proposed to core facility areas such as classrooms, laboratories, commons and the gymnasium and locker rooms. The construction of an auxiliary gym and improvements to some outdoor areas were also proposed.
“We’re gonna be discussing that as a board,” Smith said. “As early as September, but at the latest, the October board meeting.”
In another project, the district has upgraded its HVAC controls, allowing full control under one operating system per 2026 standards. This will result in energy savings and make teaching spaces at Stratton Elementary School more comfortable, Smith wrote in an email. Funded through the general fund, the upgrade has been ongoing since 2020, costing about $16,000.
The district also received a Clean Buildings Compliance Act Grant, which involves benchmarking energy at Stratton Elementary, Sadie Halstead Middle and Newport High Schools and implementing a plan with changes in scheduling and possibly infrastructure, Smith wrote. This grant totals $94,376.
