In downtown Beaverton, the rise of a three-story, 300,500-square-foot high school is hard to miss.

Structures are taking shape, and Skanska USA Building managers and district officials said the new Beaverton High School is scheduled to open in August 2026. The project is expected to cost $253 million (as budgeted) including soft costs, with $221 million of that for direct construction.

The new school is next to the existing one, portions of which date to 1916. At some locations, the new structure is as near as 14 feet to the existing one.

Skanska is serving as the construction manager/general contractor for the project designed by Portland’s BRIC Architecture. About 220 workers labor on site each day.

“Things are clipping right along and looking good for opening next fall,” said Troy Boardman, senior superintendent for Skanska.

The new Beaverton High School will have three stories to host about 1,500 students. Given a limited footprint, designers had no choice but to go vertical.

“We had to make it three stories to meet the capacity requirements,” said Jeffrey Hamman, senior project manager for Beaverton School District.

The project is funded by a 2022 bond approved by voters. Of Beaverton School District’s 54 schools, the high school was most in need of an update, officials said, along with Raleigh Hills Elementary, which is also being rebuilt. Both schools are considered seismically vulnerable.

“A community priority was having a building that’s resilient,” said Aaron Boyle, facilities division manager for Beaverton School District.

Beaverton High is being built to Risk Category IV standards under the International Building Code, meaning it’s designed to be functional immediately after an earthquake.

Essentially, there will be two separate buildings. A seismic joint will allow the structures to move in an earthquake, sliding in a 16-inch gap. Portions of the buildings also will use SidePlate connection systems for resiliency.

Only the cafeteria, built in 2004, will be retained from the existing school. The cafeteria represents the district’s efforts to construct the new high school for “future readiness.” The cafeteria structure could be demolished in years to come in favor of a three-story building if growth drives enrollment well above today’s levels.

“We hope the way that we’ve constructed (the school) allows that flexibility,” Boyle said.

For today’s students, the new Beaverton High will feature 36 general education classrooms, eight science classrooms located in their own wing, three special-education classrooms, four career-and-technical education classrooms and two CTE labs. One classroom will be dedicated for three-dimensional art.

A two-story flex space will be available for a variety of uses. The theater will be wired for modern video and audio. A clinic operated by Virginia Garcia will provide health services to any student within the district.

A gym will have three full courts, an elevated one-eighth-mile track and capacity for 3,000 people to attend events. The gym will be framed by concrete panels that were formed on-site in pouring beds before being tilted up during a weekend with the help of a crane. Each panel weighs 220,000 pounds, Boardman said.

The new school frames a central, 15,500-square-foot courtyard. Walker Macy is the landscape architect for the project.

School entrances and exits will be strictly controlled, district officials said. The new school has no entrances along Southwest Farmington Road, a major thoroughfare.

The project team has had to work around Beaverton High’s busy events schedule while ensuring school staff and students are kept apart from construction activities.

“That has been the biggest challenge,” said Trevor Wyckoff, a Skanska executive vice president. “We’re only a few feet from the existing Beaverton High School during construction.”

Construction has gone smoothly, Skanska officials said. Electrical and mechanical equipment proved to be the most difficult materials to procure, but they were ordered early enough so that no delay resulted, Wyckoff said.

The impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs program has been minimal to date, Wyckoff said.

Major subcontractors contributing to the Beaverton High project include Apollo Mechanical Contractors, Prairie Electric, REFA Erectors, Goodfellow Bros. and Anning-Johnson Co.

Correction: In an earlier version of this article, Jeffrey Hamman’s name was misspelled. Also, he is senior project manager for the Beaverton School District, not Skanska.

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Triplett Wellman Contractors is working to complete construction of a Wilsonville school after the first contractor was fired from the job.

Triplett Wellman took over from Emerick Construction. In December, West Linn-Wilsonville School District terminated Emerick, saying it had mismanaged construction at Frog Pond Primary School.

“Emerick Construction repeatedly failed to pay its subcontractors for work related to the Frog Pond Primary project despite receiving regular payment from the district,” the school district stated in December. “These actions by Emerick Construction failed to meet requirements as outlined in its contract and under Oregon law. Emerick Construction also refused to engage in mitigation efforts. These repeated failures led to ongoing delays in construction, and Emerick Construction’s continued inability to pay its subcontractors gave the district no choice but to move forward with a contract termination.”

Emerick, based in Tualatin, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on Thursday.

Woodburn-based Triplett Wellman was hired in April. The district worked with bonding company Zurich to resume work under the terms of the performance bond, the district stated.

“Work has fully resumed with completion expected sometime next school year,” district spokesman Andrew Kilstrom stated in an email on Wednesday.

Frog Pond Primary School will officially open in 2026-27.

Triplett Wellman previously completed Sunset Primary School for the district in 2017.

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By Alex Baumhardt

In some Oregon school districts, turf fields and lawn mowers were necessities to overcome the pandemic and get schools reopened.

Others used emergency relief money to retrofit buildings with ventilation systems, add laptop computers for students and pay for online teaching.

But the state still holds more than $1 billion meant to help school districts address pandemic-related issues. 

Since March 2020, Oregon has been allocated $1.7 billion in emergency relief funding from the federal government to get students back in classrooms, and to get them caught up on their education after school closures. 

Now, more than a year later, most of that money remains unspent.

School districts so far have been reimbursed for about $222 million in emergency relief projects, according to the Oregon Education Department. That means just under 8 percent of all dollars have made it back to districts.

The bulk of that money has gone to staff, technology and capital projects – getting kids laptops and wifi, upgrading ventilation systems and adding more classrooms to encourage social distancing. 

But emergency purchases also included weight room equipment, bleachers and playgrounds. 

Districts must spend at least $201 million of Oregon’s latest relief money to combat learning loss over the next three years, but data from the Education Department show that less than 1 percent has been distributed so far for that purpose.

The reasons behind what districts are buying, and when, are complex, but they have broad latitude in using the extra money.

The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund

The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund was signed into federal law in ​​March 2020 as school buildings in many states were closing and classes shifted online. 

The first round of money was ready to go out to states immediately for buying personal protective equipment for staff and students who had to remain in school buildings, and to help schools pay for the transition to online learning. That included laptops for students, new online teaching software, network security upgrades and internet hotspots for families that otherwise had no internet access.

It also paid for more teachers, substitute teachers, counselors and support staff. 

The money was awarded from the federal government to the state Education Department, which reimburses districts for their purchases. Purchases over $5,000 must have prior approval from the department.

Oregon’s share of funds in that first round was $121 million. 

Most of the state’s 216 school and education service districts have claimed some portion of the funds and to date, more than $100 million of that first round funding has been spent. 

The second and third rounds of funding came in December 2020 and March 2021. Oregon was allocated $499 million in the second round to spend on getting schools ready to reopen. 

In the third round, the state was allocated $1.1 billion. 

It was additional money for school reopening that came with a new federal mandate – school districts had to spend at least 20 percent on combating learning losses. Schools have until 2024 to spend the latest round of money.

Little to learning loss so far

Of the $1.1 billion available to Oregon districts in the third round, about $18 million has been distributed so far, according to the state Education Department. That has gone to paying for summer school programs, salaries, payroll costs, retirement costs and technology and supplies. 

Districts are allowed to use the relief funds to pay for new teachers, and boost pay for current employees for taking on additional work during the pandemic and to retain them.

Of the $202 million set aside to help students catch up on their education, about $1.4 million – less than .05 percent – has been distributed so far, according to the Education Department. 

Cynthia Stinson is senior manager of federal investments and pandemic renewal at the state Education Department. She said timing is the issue with the relatively slow payout for extra learning programs.

She said most schools haven’t had to draw on the emergency funds yet to pay for tutoring, counseling, afterschool and remediation programs. Many only just recently submitted budgets to meet an October deadline set by the federal government, and some are taking a long-range approach with the money, having been given three years to spend it. 

In an email, Marc Siegel, communications director at the Education Department wrote, “It is important to note that the three relief acts came in very short succession.” 

Siegel said many districts are still spending previous rounds of money and added, “We are only a little over three months into the school year.” 

But Oregon schools have not wasted much time getting capital projects funded, some of which include renovating running tracks, getting weight training equipment and upgrading playgrounds.

Stinson said districts have been given flexibility on what they can buy. 

The Education Department doesn’t track every rejection of a district’s requested spending, but said it turned down requests for baseball and football scoreboards, some requests for bleachers, the request for a vehicle to use for student outreach and one request for a roof replacement.

“One of the goals is also to emerge stronger post pandemic,” Stinson said of the emergency funds. “As we talk with districts, and understand what it might really mean for a rural or frontier district in Oregon to redo a playground, it’s not only for all of the kids in school, but it’s the only playground in the community, right?”

The Capital Chronicle emailed 150 Oregon school district superintendents seeking information about how they used their latest round of relief dollars. Of those, 30 superintendents or district representatives responded. 

Three wrote that they had been posting reports on their district websites about where their relief dollars were going, six sent spreadsheets detailing projects and a few said they hadn’t claimed any of the latest funding but planned to.

Jeff Clark, Amity School District superintendent, said so far most of his district’s relief dollars have gone to improving learning conditions.

“We have some older buildings with poor ventilation. Supplies, materials and equipment would be next on the list,” he wrote via email. 

Clark said the district is using dollars from the state’s Student Investment Account to help recover lost learning. That’s part of the $1 billion a year Oregon schools get under the Student Success Act that was signed into law in 2019. Several district superintendents said they preferred using that more stable funding instead of short-term federal help to pay for more staff and for programming to combat learning loss.

In the Forest Grove School District, emergency relief dollars are being used for reading and math interventions and tutoring middle schoolers, summer school activities and social and emotional support staff, according to David Warner, district communications director. 

In Hermiston, Superintendent Tricia Mooney said the district wants to use the latest round of relief money to support summer school programs to help get students caught up. 

In North Bend, school officials plan to ask for $3 million to help combat learning loss. In the Siuslaw School District, they are planning to ask for about $691,000 to combat learning loss over the current school year, according to Superintendent Andrew Grzeskowiak. 

Among most of the district leaders who responded, transitions to online learning, staff, payroll and retirement, along with capital expenses and supplies were among the biggest expenses incurred so far.

HVAC and parking lots

In an effort to get schools fully reopened in the fall, the Klamath County School District initiated construction projects with the emergency funds.

The district updated HVAC systems in an elementary school and high school, and added extra classrooms to buildings so there’d be fewer kids in each room. They also added new turf fields to several schools and resurfaced a parking lot. 

Despite being short staffed, like most districts in the state, Superintendent Glen Szymoniak said the short window to use federal relief aid meant he wasn’t going to use it to do temporary hires of teachers and counselors and programs that couldn’t be sustained.

“With money that only lasts a couple years, you do projects. That’s the golden rule right there. You don’t use it to hire people and cut them loose in a few years. It gives you a bad reputation and it’s just a terrible way to treat people,” he said. 

Rather than hiring new people, he used some of the relief money to pay employees to surrender vacation time.

“We’re buying that off at a bit of a higher rate,” he said, “so that we can have them stay in the classroom.”

He also bought lawn mowers and floor cleaners that were faster and more efficient than what he had, allowing grounds staff and janitors more time to complete other sanitation and maintenance work and negating the need to do more hiring. 

“Custodians have floor scrubbers, now there’s time to sanitize. They weren’t sanitizing like this before,” he said. “Principals with tight budgets would buy cheap mowers. Well then, none of the other work gets done. With a high capacity mower [custodians] have more time to do other stuff.”

He said investments like the turf fields and running tracks were important for sustaining school programs that students needed during the pandemic.

“The first turf I applied for was for Chiloquin,” Szymoniak said of the elementary school in his district. Because of drought and the resulting water restrictions, “If there’s not enough runoff and the lake level is a certain height they shut off the irrigation for farmers, ranchers and for us. In Chiloquin, our playgrounds turn to dust,” he said. 

The turf became an essential place for students to play, have for recess and for extracurricular activities. 

Szymoniak said he’s committed to investing more than required into activities that combat learning loss. He said his district is already spending and will continue to spend upwards of 38 percent of the district’s relief dollars on learning loss. So far, the district has set up after-school tutoring and drama programs, paid for buses to get kids to and from after-school programs and provided teacher training for paraprofessionals who might consider becoming teachers in the district.

For long-term expenses, including staffing and offering more social and emotional support programs, he is using the state-funded Student Investment Account.

“Schools are institutions just like a university. You can’t run a university with a whole lot one year and barely enough the other. They run best when there is stable, consistent funding,” he said.

Accountability for the millions

Jennifer Patterson, an assistant superintendent at the Education Department, said agency officials will continue to talk with school district superintendents about how to make the most of the money.

“We would want to be in conversation with districts to say, what are you noticing about this investment? Is it yielding outcomes that you can see? And to help people do what educators do best, which is to notice a need and be responsive to shifting their investment and strategy if they’re not seeing the kinds of outcomes that they predicted.”

The department itself gets to set aside 10 percent of all the relief dollars, or roughly $165 million, for emergencies, combating learning losses, helping charter schools, the Oregon School for the Deaf and juvenile corrections programs. 

So far the department $56 million to combat learning losses.

“The arc of the money is long and we’ve talked about going slow to go fast,” Patterson said. “In the sense of, you know, this money doesn’t have to be spent until September 30, 2024. So, really taking a longer view of the investment over time, that will maximize meeting the strengths and needs of local communities and students.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Les Zaitz for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on and .

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A $695 million bond measure to pay for construction of nine schools for Evergreen Public Schools has passed, according to preliminary election results in Washington.

Approximately 61 percent of voters approved the bond measure, according to the Clark County Elections office. In Washington, a 60 percent supermajority is required to pass school bonds.

The general obligation bonds will fund construction of a new elementary school and replacements for five elementary schools, a middle school and two high schools with new buildings at existing campuses. Other schools will receive various renovations and improvements.

“The voters have placed great confidence in the district by approving the largest bond in the community’s history,” Evergreen Public Schools Board President Todd Yuzuriha stated in a news release. “When combined with anticipated state matching funds and locally collected impact fees, more than $800 million in school projects will be completed over the next six years. Thank you to the community for your incredible support.”

The Evergreen Public Schools projects are scheduled to be completed by 2024. LSW Architects of Vancouver is serving as design consultant.

Two other major school district bonds were on Tuesday’s ballot in Clark County. La Center School District voters comfortably approved a $48 million bond measure for construction of a new middle school, conversion of the existing La Center Middle School into an elementary school and land acquisition. The bond passed with 65.61 percent of votes in favor.

However, Battle Ground voters rejected a $225 million bond measure that would have funded construction of six schools as well as other renovations and improvements to accommodate growth. With only 58.34 percent of votes in favor, the supermajority requirement was not met.

Final results will be certified on Feb. 23.

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Clark County, Washington, voters will on Tuesday decide three major school bonds that, if passed, would kick off nearly $1 billion of construction activity.

Evergreen Public Schools is asking voters for a $695 million general obligation bond that would pay for construction of one new elementary school and eight replacement schools as well as safety and security upgrades, roof replacements and heating-and-cooling upgrades throughout the 26,000-student district.

Battle Ground Public Schools has its own package: nearly $224.9 million for construction of a new primary school, a new middle school, four replacement schools, and other renovations and improvements to accommodate growth.

Meanwhile, La Center School District is asking voters for $48 million to build a new middle school, convert an existing middle school into an elementary school and enable the district to buy land.

For Evergreen Public Schools, the first three projects likely would be bid as a package, spokeswoman Gail Spolar said. That includes construction of a new, not-yet-named elementary school on a vacant, district-owned site at Northeast 39th Avenue and 162nd Street, and new school buildings for Image Elementary and Sifton Elementary.

Image Elementary would be rebuilt on a new site near Northeast 52nd Avenue and 131st Street. Sifton Elementary would be rebuilt near the existing school at 7301 N.E. 137th Ave.

Following those projects, new buildings would be constructed for three other elementary schools (Burton, Ellsworth and Marrion), two high schools (Mountain View and Legacy) and Wy’east Middle School. Also, Heritage High School would gain a new wing to replace 39 portable classrooms.

Evergreen is working off of a model elementary school building designed by LSW Architects of Vancouver. A standard floor plan would be adapted to fit each site, Spolar said.

Evergreen’s board in November voted to place the large bond request on the ballot. If successful, the build-out would last only a few years, Spolar said.

“We want to have all of those projects completed in a six-year time frame,” she said.

Evergreen officials calculate that the bond won’t increase taxes beyond current rates. That’s because of a change in Washington’s state funding model for schools. Property taxes in 2019 would total $6.16 per $1,000 in assessed value, or $1,848 on a $300,000 home, according to school district estimates. That’s down from 2017, when property taxes totaled $6.98 per $1,000, or $2,094 in assessed value.

“For the average taxpayer, in 2019, when the new bond would kick in, they would actually be paying less in school taxes than they are now,” Spolar said. “We’re paying off our old bonds from our 2002 bond measure, and there’s been a change in the state school funding model, so that drops some other local maintenance and operating taxes.”

The Battle Ground bond measure aims to reduce overcrowding and improve infrastructure and safety. A new primary and middle school campus would be built. Glenwood Heights Primary, Laurin Middle and both Pleasant Valley Primary and Middle schools would be replaced.

Battle Ground is growing as homebuilders push northward from the Vancouver area, district spokeswoman Rita Sanders said.

“We are the next place to build houses,” she said.

An outside consultant forecast enrollment in the district will increase by 1,535 to 2,740 students in the next 10 years. The district enrolled 13,153 students in October.

Much of the growth is happening in the district’s southern portion, which has the oldest schools, Sanders said. Glenwood Heights was built for 484 students but currently has more than 800, many of whom are placed in modular classrooms.

The bond measures must be approved by a 60 percent supermajority to take effect. For each school district, the bonds would need to be repaid within 21 years. Washington voters, unlike their Oregon counterparts, have until Election Day to postmark their ballots.

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The Hillsboro School District plans to ask general election voters in November to support a $408 million construction bond to upgrade its building stock.

The district on Aug. 2 published a request for proposals for architectural services, and will interview candidates later this month.

If passed, the bond would fund three new elementary schools; heavy remodels of two high schools and a middle school; and seismic, MEP and roof upgrades at every other district school.

Hillsboro School District is the fourth-largest school district in Oregon with 21,000 students across 25 elementary, four middle and five high schools. The average age of a school building in the district is approximately 40 years old.

District voters approved construction bonds in 1995, 1999 and 2006; a 2013 campaign for a $25 million safety and technology bond was unsuccessful.

While the 20-year bond’s scope won’t cover all of the district’s needs, the $408 million amount was chosen because it would allow the district to maintain its current bond rate of $2.24 per $1,000 of assessed value, Adam Stewart, the school district’s chief financial officer, said.

“A big selling point for our community is that we can do all these wonderful things and not have to raise our tax rate for bonded indebtedness,” Stewart said.

Stewart said the district intends to file paperwork with the Washington County Elections office before the Sept. 7 deadline in order to make the Nov. 7 ballot.

A spokesperson for the Oregon Secretary of State’s office said no school districts in Oregon have yet filed bond measures for the ballot.

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In St. Helens, quality of children’s education has suffered because of outdated facilities. But over the next two years, more than $50 million will be invested in improvements to serve the district.

“Trying to have a 21st century learning strategy and squeeze it into a 20th century school is not great,” said Scot Stockwell, superintendent of the St. Helens School District.

There are three main projects being paid for with $49 million in bond money approved by voters in 2016 and $4 million more in lottery funds. The largest project will replace St. Helens Middle School with a modern building. Also, a new Columbia County Education Campus (CCEC) will replace a series of portable classrooms. Finally, St. Helens High School will gain security and classroom upgrades.

“Bonds are always tough sells in St. Helens,” Stockwell said. “We had gone 20 to 25 years without a bond.”

A key to earning public support for this bond, he said, was focusing on what was most pressing and what the community could afford. That is where Soderstrom Architects came in, and informed the public of major issues – two were tied to asbestos and fire safety – plaguing the middle school.

“We were hired to do the facilities master plan,” said Henry Fitzgibbon, a partner with the firm. “We held a number of public meetings, and the public was in favor replacing the (middle school).

“Code states you can only have so many feet without a fire wall. It was more than double the footage with no fire walls, so we would have (had) to put in fire walls.”

Voters’ approval of the bond measure has set the stage for a new, $41.3 million, 104,000-square-foot middle school to open before classes start in September 2019. The structure will be able to accommodate 750 students, and include a large commons area, a cafeteria and an area for outdoor classes. The design calls for two gymnasiums – one large enough to hold spectator events and another for physical education classes.

“It was a tricky site design,” Fitzgibbon said. “We had to keep the current middle school in operation while building. We essentially put the new school on top of the existing track and field.”

The new facility will also sport a unique design.

“By making it U-shaped, we were able to tighten the footprint,” he said. “It also afforded a space to have an outdoor classroom.”

Also, the new school will increase educators’ ability to provide hands-on learning, Fitzgibbon said.

“It will have a maker space and a robotics room,” he said. “It’s designed to provide for a lot of power and tools for making robots. There are national competitions that St. Helens competes in robotics.”

The new, $4.4 million CCEC structure will be sandwiched between the administration office and new middle school. It will replace five portable classrooms that suffered from dry rot, leakage problems and the absence of spaces such as a library.

The school serves students in a nontraditional format, focusing on communication skills, assertiveness training and conflict resolution, among other life skills.

“It’s a strong program that deserves more than what they’ve got,” Stockwell said, in reference to existing facilities. “We are telling these kids to stay in school and then put them in the worst classrooms.”

The new facility will include a commons area and a kitchen; it’s scheduled to open in fall 2018.

Remaining money from the $53 million pot will go toward improving security and a science classroom at St. Helens High School.

The public engagement process for the bond measure has helped unite the community and generate pride in the projects, Stockwell said.

“Sentimentally, it brought a lot of people together,” he said.

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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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