MEETINGS HELD ON PROPOSED HIGH SCHOOL EXPANSION BOND

By Chris Cook - Forks Forum editor

The Quillayute Valley School District (QVSD) has an additional 1,000 students due to its providing a home base for the online, virtual-learning Insight School of Washington program.

Hosting the online school could bring in millions of dollars in savings for taxpayers living within QVSD boundaries if a bond for the second phase of construction at Forks High School is approved by voters in November.

Calls to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) in Olympia showed that state matching funding of 100 percent would be available for some sections of the construction costs, Reaume told the QVSD school board and community members gathered for a meeting on a school bond issue being proposed for the November general election.

However, QVSD is the only district in the state that provides administration for a large virtual school, and the Legislature may do away with the advantage during their 2009 session, Reaume said.
Instead of $6.5 million in state funds, millions of dollars less in funding might be allocated in the future if the bond is sought next year or in following years.

Members of the community attending the meeting spoke positively of the possible one-third match, some saying it was like a rebate for lost timber revenue-supported school funding.

The community input meeting drew about three dozen local residents and was held at the QVSD board meeting room in the Auto Tech building on South Forks Avenue on Thursday, May 29. An additional community meeting is set for mid-June, and community outreaches are being planned.

Among comments made were: “It”ll be harder down the road to get something like this to pass” and “It’s important to keep schools up, but a hard sell in this economy.”

Architectural consultant BLRB of Tacoma have drawn up an estimate of $18.4 million for the project which would add classrooms, administrative offices and other new facilities to the Forks High School campus. The work would centralize instruction, which is now spread out among six buildings.

The matching state funding could result in a savings of one-third, or about $6.5 million, she said, bringing the cost down to about $12,768,000.

Bids would be sought next year, and construction would start in early spring 2010 and be completed in time for the opening of the 2011-2012 school year.

On Wednesday evening May 28, the 25-member facility usage committee set to plan and draw up the bond proposal met at Forks High School library.

Reaume was joined at both meetings by BLRB partner and project manager John Wegener.
The final plan for the bond is to be presented to the school board in early August. Soon after the district office must submit the bond proposal to the Clallam County Auditor’s Office for it to appear on the Nov. 4 general election ballot.
Reaume said the plans were based on “the needs of Forks” and take into consideration the needs of the entire community, not just students, parents and educators.

Wegener’s presentation showed that BLRB has completed almost 600 school projects over the past 54 years, including 89 high school projects, with a total value of over $2 billion.

He said his firm focuses on smaller school districts, and they would be proposing a cost-conscious design.
He said 10 years ago schools cost about 50 percent less to build, and that construction costs are now rising about an eight-to-nine percent clip each year.

Local sub-contractors would be invited to bid on sections of the work, Wegener said.

Reaume said a cost estimate made last year came out at $346 per square foot, which the school board saw as considerably too high. Wegener’s preliminary cost analysts showed a $265 per square foot cost for the 31,200 square-foot phase two expansion of the high school.

The plans are designed for a student body of about 350 students.

She said student population in most school districts in the north and west Olympic Peninsula are shrinking, while it is expected that the QVSD will remain stable or grow.

Reaume said administration and counseling offices now located in the brick fronted circa 1925 high school building are being moved to the Instructional Learning Center over the summer, and that the red doors to the antiquated building will be boarded up in July.

She said currently students attend classes in six different buildings, which makes it difficult to supervise students.
Wegener said financing the high school expansion would be the focus of community meetings scheduled for Wednesday, June 18 and Thursday, June 19 in Forks. At the meetings, an estimate of how much the bond would cost property tax payers per thousand dollars of valuation.

The QVSD is qualified for up to about $15 million in bonding for school projects.

The four-year QVSD maintenance and program levy comes up for a vote in the spring, and is currently funded at about $1.5 million per year. The levy includes support for athletics and extra-curricular programs.

“Design will be done with community consensus,” Wegener said.

He said in designing the school expansion community members, students and educators will be invited to sit around a large table and arrange pieces representing classroom and other parts of the buildings into two or three configurations during a process that will likely take a full day. He said that would be the starting point of the design process.
Construction would take about 12-14 months, and begin in late spring.