Excavation for the exterior wall of new classrooms is seen in this photograph from the Toledo School District Facebook page.
The closure of all Washington schools through the end of the school year has brought a variety of challenges for school districts, however, for the Toledo and Oakville school districts, there has been a silver lining. Both districts were in the midst of large construction projects when Gov. Jay Inslee ordered the school closures.
Some construction projects were halted because of the stay at home orders but work on school buildings was deemed essential.
“Actually not having the kids there actually sped up the process rather than slowed it down. I think (the school closure) has allowed us to not have to worry about working around staff and kids so in some ways I think it’s making the process more efficient. It’s no longer an obstacle,” said Oakville School District Superintendent Rich Staley.
Oakville School District passed a bond in the November 2019 election to collect $5.6 million from Oakville citizens and $9 million in state matching funds, accompanied by secured state grants, allowed them to tackle several projects that will improve school conditions for students. Toledo School District passed a bond in November of 2018 for $7 million which qualified them for $18 million in state funding enabling them to start building a new high school. The groundbreaking ceremony for the new Toledo High School took place in late January of this year.
“Before COVID, once we secured all of the monies, we were talking about having to do some sort of swing shift that would start at 3 o’clock when the students left and work into the evening. ... Not having the students there were are not going to have to do that,” said Staley. “We are still in the design phase but we are estimating that demolition of the old locker rooms will start to happen within the next couple weeks and they will start in earnest on all five of our grant projects June 1st.”
Staley said that they were also going to have to clean out a couple of areas of the school that are going to be demolished and rebuilt, which will take a good deal of time. Now that the custodial staff does not have the regular duties of keeping the school clean each day when students are there they can focus their time on preparing for the remodel.
“It actually made it easier because we didn’t have the students around so our custodial staff was able to focus on that and not have to worry about whether or not the building was clean. So that helped out in a lot of ways,” said Staley.
Staley said the district has identified five projects that are top priority and will be in the works no later than June 1st — the renovation of the old locker rooms, installation of a more efficient HVAC system in 80 percent of the buildings, installing LED lighting throughout all buildings, putting a new roof on one of the main buildings and replacement of all noncompliant single-pane windows. Oakville recently completed resurfacing of the gymnasium floors.
“It made us rethink our priorities this summer because they’re going to be doing some lighting and HVAC work around the buildings and so were purposely not going to clean certain rooms during our summer cleaning until that is over with. So we’re doing some purposeful things that way,” said Staley.
Toledo School District Superintendent Chris Rust said that right now most of what they’re doing is the excavation and the laying of water and sewer pipes for the new high school building.
“Construction is underway and we’re on schedule — maybe a little bit ahead of schedule,” he said. “Things are easier for our contractor because there’s nobody up there so they don’t have to dance around us and they can move their fences around without having to worry about the safety of students and staff. We’re real pleased with how things are going.”
Rust said that accelerating the process even further is dependent on getting the materials and if the contractors can work while maintaining a s6foot distance.
“We’re certainly not being held back and we’ve had good weather so that’s all real good,” Rust said.
The construction of the high school is being completed in five phases. The new classroom wing, new offices and the new commons are expected to be completed by December of this year and the full completion of the high school is expected in the fall of 2021, Rust said.
Rust mentioned another benefit that has emerged from the school closure — the convenience of Zoom meetings for parents with students in the special education program — who, prior to the closure, had to take time off of work to go to the meetings at the school.
“We are finding that we can do an IEP (Individualized Education Program) meeting in a Zoom meeting and it goes much quicker and parents don’t need to take time off of work. It is likely that we are going to continue that practice even after school resumes as normal. We’re looking for as many of those kinds of things as we can,” said Rust. “We see this less as a holding pattern and more as a launching pad to finding new and better ways of doing things.”
