Subcontractors are invited to attend an to become acquainted with representatives of Salem-Keizer Public Schools and Pence Construction – the selected construction manager-general contractor for a pair of large school renovation projects.

At the event, scheduled for 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the school district’s office at 3630 State St., officials will provide information about the to renovate and expand both North Salem and McNary high schools. The North Salem project is valued at $54 million and the McNary project is valued at $39 million. Both are being paid for with money from a $619 million bond approved by voters earlier this year.

Specifically, the project team is seeking subcontractors engaged in earthwork, utilities, concrete and site concrete, paving, landscaping, masonry, steel fabrication and installation, carpentry, casework and finish carpentry, roofing, windows, doors, drywall and metal stud framing, painting, flooring, specialties and cleaning.

Subcontractors interested in attending should contact LaVon Maskell, the district’s purchasing department manager, at 503-399-3083 or maskell_lavon@salkeiz.k12.or.us. Or call the school district at 503-391-1133 for more information.

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A City Club of Portland debate on Metro‘s $652.8 million affordable housing ballot measure quickly grew tense Friday with an attendee’s question that confronted two panelists with accusations of privilege and racism.

Andy Duyck, chairman of Washington County‘s board of commissioners, and Gerard Mildner, a Portland State University professor of real estate finance, represented the ‘no’ side of the debate.

After a relatively staid debate, they quickly found themselves on the defensive during a question-and-answer session. Duyck had earlier said voters should “do no harm” to property taxpayers by rejecting the bond. Moderator Karol Collymore, reading aloud written questions from attendees, posed a pointed query.

“Hearing two white men discuss the concept of ‘do no harm’ to those burdened by this bond financially sounds like privilege and supremacy,” Collymore said. “How can we trust your opinion as a ‘no’ vote when it feels so rooted in racism?”

Duyck answered, “If you can play the race card, I guess I can’t win. Sorry, wrong color skin. I’m going to pass on that one.”

That led Collymore to follow up, objecting to Duyck’s use of “race card.”

“As a point of privilege, because I have this microphone, the race card isn’t a thing, and I think you should probably think about stopping saying that because we really don’t have cards to play,” she said.

The barbed exchange illustrated the intersection between race and public policy, and that race is never far from discussions of affordable housing, homelessness and taxation.

Metro’s bond will appear on Nov. 6 ballots alongside a constitutional amendment that would allow public agencies to leverage tax dollars with for-profit and nonprofit developers. Housing advocates have pushed for both measures, saying they would together begin to make a dent in the need for affordable housing.

The ‘yes’ side of the panel debate was represented by Lynn Peterson, president-elect of the Metro Council, and Shannon Singleton, executive director of JOIN – a Portland nonprofit that provides outreach and housing placement to the homeless.

“I think that what we’re hearing today is that there’s actually been no good arguments put forward not to vote for this ballot measure, and in fact, we need to move forward because ‘do nothing’ is not an answer,” Peterson said. “Five dollars a month – we’re hoping folks will make this investment in each other.”

Duyck and Mildner argued the bond would be inefficient and produce too little housing.

“For every person who’s lucky enough to win the lottery of affordable housing, there are nine more who will be hurt by higher taxes and higher rents,” Duyck said.

The ballot measure would raise property tax by 24 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, or approximately $60 a year for an average home. Metro aims to create 3,900 housing units with the money.

City Club’s study committee has recommended a ‘yes’ vote on the measure.

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If a new elementary school under construction in Beaverton looks familiar, there’s a good reason why – it is the latest in a series of campuses Beaverton School District is building from a prototype design by DLR Group. Hazeldale Elementary School is the third of four bond-funded K-5 schools to be built from the prototype design; two were completed last fall, and construction of the fourth will begin this summer.

The new Hazeldale school is replacing an outdated campus built in 1942 that was no longer meeting the community’s needs. The structure had gained multiple additions over the years, was expensive to maintain, and lacked current technology and capacity for projected growth of the student body. As such, the school was one of three K-5 sites identified as prime candidates for replacement as part of a $680 million bond passed in 2014.

The school is being built by general contractor Kirby Nagelhout Construction, which began work last summer. The two-story concrete and steel structure, at 87,200 square feet, will be the district’s largest K-5 campus. It will feature a ground-floor commons area, a gymnasium, administrative and service spaces, and kindergarten and special education classrooms. The second floor will house classrooms for grades one through five.

In addition to 32 classrooms, the school will have nine teaching spaces, including five flexible commons areas. The 6,717-square-foot gymnasium will be dividable to support two simultaneous physical education classes. A central courtyard will provide daylight penetration in classrooms and common areas, and will feature a pair of demonstration stormwater ponds that will collect water channeled from a rooftop drain. The drain will run through a colored pipe that will be visible inside the building and then reach an exit spout in the courtyard.

Site upgrades to the campus will also include a 10,000-square-foot covered play area and a new soccer field. Vehicle entries will be separated, with accommodations for buses on one side of the building and accommodations for other vehicles on the opposite side. Whereas vehicle entries were previously on Southwest Farmington Road, they will be moved to side streets for improved safety and traffic flow.

The project team includes landscape architect Cameron McCarthy and civil engineer Harper Houf Peterson Righellis; DLR Group is performing the structural and mechanical engineering. The project will be completed this summer, and the school is scheduled for an August 27 opening.

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Voters this week approved Portland Public Schools‘ – at $790 million, the largest ever OK’d in Oregon.

The margin was approximately 66 percent in favor and 34 percent opposed.

The large dollar amount is mainly due to significant health and safety upgrades needed throughout district facilities. Alarming amounts of lead were discovered in drinking water pipes, and other problems are tied to asbestos, radon, seismic vulnerability and insufficient fire and life safety systems.

Four schools – Benson, Lincoln and Madison high schools and Kellogg Middle School – will either receive significant modernizations or be rebuilt completely. But nearly all of the district’s 90 schools are expected to receive at least some attention.

District leaders were uncertain prior to the election whether the bond measure would pass after a series of scandals, including the mistaken award of a $146 million design contract to the bidder rated second-best by PPS’ own formula. BLRB Architects was already under contract with the district by the time the top-rated bidder – a team of Opsis Architecture and Dao Architecture – was debriefed by PPS.

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A majority of Portland Public Schools board members back a plan to ask voters in May to support a construction bond valued between $745 million and $790 million.

All board members earlier this week attended a bond work session where options were discussed, and all appeared to support floating the bond in May, as opposed to November.

PPS’ previous bond measure, passed by voters in November 2012, was for $482 million. Prior to that, a bond measure in May 2011 failed.

The board recently wrapped up listening sessions with the public. Two options remain: one covering $745 million of work, and the other covering $790 million.

A consultant contracted by PPS confirmed that two options are being considered.

With enrollment growing, the district’s facilities are at crowding levels. Deferred maintenance is another issue. PPS has only two buildings younger than 50 years old. Some are older than 100. The average age is 76.

But the district’s first priority is to upgrade its high schools.

Under all plans now being considered, a new Lincoln High School would be built. Benson Polytechnic High School would get a total remodel. Madison High School would receive considerable remodels to separate sections of campus.

Much of the bond total would go toward efforts to address health and safety issues. Lead found in PPS schools’ fixtures has been a major issue, and ultimately led to the resignation of former board president Carole Smith.

Lead paint, radon and asbestos have been found at all PPS schools. Many facilities require seismic remediation. The bond money also would cover improvements tied to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Several questions remain, and their answers will affect which option the board eventually selects. The district is considering re-drawing school boundaries, in which case it may need to reopen the shuttered Kellogg Middle School. The school would require considerable upgrades, partly due to sitting idle with a leaky roof for more than a decade. It’s also possible that the district would opt to build a new middle school, which would cost around $47 million.

A May ballot measure has the board’s support.

“We need to get at the health safety piece,” board member Steve Buel said. “We need to fix the lead in the water. We need to get at the lead paint. We need to get at the radon. We need to take care of the asbestos. We need to do it – it’d be great to do all that tomorrow.”

A public survey closed Friday afternoon. The board will hold a work session Monday to consider its remaining options.

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For school districts, bond measures are a big deal. Without voters’ approval, officials can’t budget for needed repairs or new facilities. With so much riding on these efforts, some districts are enlisting architecture firms to provide more than designs.

“School design is a very collaborative, iterative process where we do a lot of educational facility planning work ahead of actually designing,” said Steve Olson, a principal at DOWA-IBI Group. “We work with staff, teachers and parents to define what the project is going to be.”

As part of preplanning, architects may perform surveys of facilities, cost analyses, community outreach and more. That kind of work helped the Tigard-Tualatin and Gresham-Barlow school districts prepare for bond measures that will be put before voters next month.

Tigard-Tualatin School District is asking for $291.3 million for a lot of work, including reconstruction of James Templeton Elementary School, Twality Middle School and Tigard High School, expansion of Tualatin High School and construction of a new elementary school. Olson and others at DOWA-IBI Group have been working with district officials for years.

Susan Stark Haydon, spokeswoman for the Tualatin-Tigard School District, said that Olson’s team began meeting with long-range planning task forces in 2014. Last year, discussions focused on site plans and project pricing.

“The district led those meetings but drew on the expertise of DOWA people to provide site plans based on what the committees wanted,” she said. “I feel pretty confident they’ve done a good job and the pricing is pretty accurate.”

Helping school district officials prepare for elections means gathering a lot of details, including costs, Olson said. These can make or break a ballot measure, he added.

“If they’re going to ask voters for money, we have to have as many details as we can ahead of time,” he said. “We need to accurately estimate the costs because when a school district passes a bond they only have so many dollars, so it has to be delivered on budget.”

DOWA-IBI Group’s work has been vital in preparation for the bond measure, Haydon said.

“They really helped narrow down what’s possible, plus they also could show us what’s new in school construction and give us ideas about how the latest school buildings are being built,” she said.

Meanwhile, Gresham-Barlow School District has been working with DLR Group in advance of putting a $291.1 million bond measure before voters. Upgrades are planned for 17 schools, including major renovations of Sam Barlow High School and Gresham High School as well as replacements of North Gresham Elementary School and East Gresham Elementary School.

Mike Schofield, chief financial officer for Gresham-Barlow School District, said DLR Group met with the bond measure planning committee to identify needs, meet with the community and ascertain costs for needed work.

“This was really important in terms of walking the community through a process,” he said. “They helped us ask the right questions.”

Karen Montovino, a senior associate at DLR Group, said she collaborates with school districts during the public process. Her team performs assessments and engages with citizens, parents, district administrators and community leaders to determine what needs to be done.

“We look at the physical conditions of the buildings – what’s worn and what’s broken – and we look at their educational program because the main goal is to improve student learning,” she said. “Then we look at what spaces they need because there might be some missing pieces, like a small conference room or a specialty lab.”

Before recommending a plan for construction, Montovino said she also looks at the district’s attrition rates – enrollment projections and future student population – as well as its primary education goals.

Once a preliminary plan is laid out for needed work, pricing become extremely important, Montovino said.

“At least 25 years ago we started working with school districts and got into the facility planning process, realizing the best plan we can come up with does no good if they can’t pass the bond,” she said.

Reynolds School District last year won voters’ approval for a $125 million bond package. The involvement of Oh Planning + Design was critical, district spokeswoman Andrea Watson said.

Deb France, owner of Oh Planning + Design and her team spent two years leading the master planning process, according to Watson. The firm conducted thorough research, collaborated with district staffers and volunteers, and both obtained feedback and reported back to the community.

“They did evaluations of the buildings, best estimates of costs over time and a lot of public engagement and working with the facility master planning committee,” Watson said. “They were the ones on the ground and did a lot of report writing, organized people who did the facility condition index and developed a community survey.”

With thoroughly researched and quantifiable data from Oh Planning + Design in hand, criticism of the bond measure became easier to defend, Watson said.

“One of the reasons it’s hard to build trust is because so many of these (bond measures) are built on projections, and people end up thinking you’re not telling truth,” she said.

As for Portland Public Schools, it’s big enough to be able to rely on its own experts. Although architects contributed to planning for the $482 million bond measure approved by voters in 2012, district officials opted to handle next year’s $750 million request in-house.

“This time we did the master planning ahead of time and did not use architects for the May 2017 bond issue,” PPS spokesman David Mayne said.

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