Note: this is the second in a series about Sequim School District’s construction bond and Educational Programs & Operations (EP&O) levy renewal proposals going to voters in a Feb. 11 special election.
During discussions with Sequim School District staff about the proposed $145.95 million 20-year bond, recurring themes for Helen Haller Elementary (HHE) and Sequim High School (SHS) continued to come up: the schools’ aging infrastructure and safety concerns.
Mike Santos, the district’s director of Facilities, Operations, and Security, said he often speaks about the two schools in the same context because “they have the same problems.”
The district’s bond proposes to replace Helen Haller Elementary School with a new building and to build new self-contained instructional wings at Sequim High School to connect to remaining buildings, such as the H-building.
Read part one of the series here.
This series will focus later on the district’s other proposals, including plans at Greywolf Elementary School to add a cafeteria, update its bus loop and parking lot, and upgrade heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC); upgrade the district’s athletic field and facilities and stadium; improve or replace the Transportation Center; and create a new bus loop through the school district’s main campus.
In addition to the bond, voters will consider a four-year, approximate $36.2 million EP&O levy renewal that district leaders say contributes about 17% of the district’s funding for teacher and staffing levels, athletics and arts programs, special education, technology updates, and more.
Background
Most of Helen Haller Elementary’s buildings date back to the 1970s and were constructed to support about 350 children, while today it provides classroom space for about 530 students in grades 3-5.
Due to its age, the district can receive $5.2 million from the State Construction Assistance Program (SCAP) to help with construction costs and bring the bond total down to its current proposed amount.
Sequim High School’s pods A-E were built more than 50 years ago and both it and HHE feature California designs, or open campuses with hallways outside, some covered areas, and easy public access. However, the district did add fencing to HHE and Olympic Peninsula Academy to reduce access areas.
HHE and SHS also host 12 portable classrooms dating back to 1974 with the most current being two from 1995. Santos said the service life on portables is intended to be 20 years, and due to their current condition “they will not survive their next paint job.”
“They are deteriorating quickly,” he said.
District staff said they investigated renovating both schools and estimated that the costs between new construction and renovation would be about 1.6 times more for HHE and 1.8 times more for SHS due to the age of the buildings and space between structures and utilities.
As time goes on, that multiplier will continue to increase, Santos said.
Sequim Gazette photo by Matthew Nash Due to Helen Haller Elementary’s age, antiquated equipment, limited amenities, such as bathrooms, costs for renovation, and many other factors, Sequim School District leaders propose a new elementary school as part of the Feb. 11 construction bond.
Utilities
Structurally, HHE and SHS’s buildings have significant water, power, sewer and stormwater issues, Santos said.
Power
With electricity concerns, he said the schools no longer have space to add power needs, and much of the wiring is aluminum and no longer compliant.
“(For example), we can’t retrofit (the schools) with LED (lights),” he said.
When there are repairs and a fixture is replaced, Santos said staff must update the wiring, fixture and room, which adds to the costs.
“It snowballs,” he said.
Additionally, power lines were poured into the floor slabs, so to make repairs staff must tear out the floor, but that’s if they can find the fault, Santos said.
Both campuses have switchgears, where the main power is brought to the schools, dating back to at least the 1970s, too.
“We can’t buy parts, and if they fail, or any pieces fail then (different systems like the fire alarm) don’t work,” he said.
So why not put wiring in the walls?
Because the masonry – concrete masonry units (CMUs) – was built with asbestos in it.
“It’d be a nightmare,” he said.
When doing wall repairs, he said there is a time-consuming and expensive procedure to prevent exposures to the particulates and if staff were to run wiring outside the walls it would “be nearly impossible and incredibly expensive.”
When they open a wall, they would have to remediate and contain the atmosphere, regardless of the size of the hole.
“To renovate a school that way is expensive,” he said.
The cinder blocks are also not reinforced, or earthquake proof to today’s standards, Santos said, while Greywolf Elementary and Sequim Middle School were built to seismic standards of their building dates (early and late 1990s).
Water and Sewer
At the schools, the galvanized water pipes are beginning to close from corrosion, staff have reported.
Santos said with pipes also underneath floors, they’d have to surface mount piping for all toilets, fountains, valves and sinks.
“(HHE and SHS) are also woefully undersized for the amount of bathrooms required,” he said. “They have 20 percent of what’s required.”
Sewer lines are also failing at SHS, Santos said, due to age-related corrosion and likely because of vegetation intrusion.
The school is connected to the City of Sequim’s sewer system, while HHE has a tank and ejector pump that pumps waste nine-and-a-half feet uphill to the system.
Santos said the elementary school sits that far below Fir Street and the system is from 1972. It has a single point of failure and is expensive to replace.
Stormwater
Both campuses feature dry wells that Santos says have never been dug up or replaced because they’re plugged up after each rain storm.
“When water goes down downspouts, it has nowhere to go except onto the property and into the courtyard at both schools,” he said. “So it begins to infiltrate under the foundations, and it’s starting to compromise buildings at both schools.”
So why not just dig up the wells?
He says the cost would be in the hundreds-of-thousands of dollars due to the size of the buildings and the standards they must meet. Plus, the schools’ utilities go across their courtyards, “so we can’t just go digging up dry wells.”
“Anytime we replace systems, we have to bring them up to code, and not just a piece of them, but all of them,” Santos said.
Safety
Safety and security were major driving points for the district’s board of directors in proposing the bond measure, they said in December.
Along with the exposed open campuses being a major driver, Superintendent Regan Nickels said staff cannot electrify doors and modernize them so that they can lock from a centralized location due to the lack of electrical expansion capabilities.
The antiquated locksets are not compatible with modern locksets either, Santos said, and the wiring would need to be surface mounted, door jams taken out, and there’d have to be “a significant amount of remediation for asbestos.”
Between HHE and SHS, hundreds of doors would need to be replaced, district staff estimate.
Santos called asbestos abatement for the doors a “can of worms because once you rip that (door) out, now the building itself from the door has to meet certain energy standards.”
“You almost can’t touch it from a remodel perspective without bringing the whole thing up to code,” he said.
Staff plan to propose safety changes at each school, such as adding vestibules that allow for only one way into a school.
Nickels said the concept would be similar to Puyallup School District where visitors enter a welcoming lobby through unlocked doors, are greeted by staff to show ID and sign in before going through a second set of locked doors.
Santos said Olympic Peninsula Academy’s layout may not have a vestibule because of how it’s built, but they’ll use other strategies to maintain the same checkpoint concept.
“It’s ‘visitor management’ and still welcoming,” Nickels said. “We’re not trying to have hard schools.
“In a rural school environment, your school secretaries become so familiar with parents they do a wonderful job of noticing things, and we know school safety starts with knowing each other.
“You welcome somebody, get their information, and document who is in the facility with a visitor’s log.”
Image courtesy Sequim School District/ A conceptual layout from Sequim School District’s main campus shows where the proposed $145.95 million bond could move facilities, such as a new building for Helen Haller Elementary behind its existing facility, and an enclosed Sequim High School campus. District staff said no design elements have been set, and they need to pass the bond before anything is determined.
Designs
No designs have been set, Nickels said, such as a two-story HHE building behind the current building or SHS’s layout.
The district was provided and has shared conceptual layouts from a consultant to help staff plan for needed square footage of the high level proposals.
Funding amounts and square footage were based on enrollment numbers and standards set by the state, Nickels said.
“It’s all a work in progress,” she said.
They’ll seek input from community members and staff for design and layouts with a hired architectural/engineering team(s) upon passing the bond.
Santos said for SHS they’ll seek to construct and connect to a monolithic structure, one enclosed building with “H Building the best example of a monolithic we have and we’ll use that as a genesis for the rest of buildings that will be built there.”
District leaders said what happens with the current HHE building, green space, parking, etc. is to be determined.
Follow-up
Ballots will be mailed Jan. 22 to Sequim School District voters for the Feb. 11 special election.
Community discussions and tours continue through the district at 11 a.m. Thursday in the District Office Board Room, 503 N. Sequim Ave.; 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 23 in the Sequim High School Library, 601 N. Sequim Ave.; and 9 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 28 and 1 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 30, both in the District Office Board Room.
Applications will be available in early February for a bond oversight committee for community members to be a part of the process and keep it accountable.
District staff said the new proposals’ combined rate with the 20-year bond ($0.91) and four-year levy rate ($0.94) would come to $1.85 per $1,000 of assessed value per year of a property in the school district.
District staff said the increase for a homeowner with a $340,000 assessed value would be $190.40 more a year, or $15.87 a month, starting in 2026.
For more information on the proposals, visit sequimschools.org.
Note: Matthew Nash has family employed and enrolled in Sequim School District.
Sequim Gazette photo by Matthew Nash Helen Haller Elementary (pictured) and most of Sequim High School’s walls are not reinforced and have asbestos in them, which has significant costs when repairs are needed, report Sequim School District staff. They estimate it would cost 1.6 times more to renovate the entire elementary school and 1.8 times more for the high school than to build new schools.
