Progress report: Mount Angel school improvement plans reviewed

By Steve Ritchie 

Drop by the Kennedy High School track on a spring afternoon, and you’ll see a hub of activity with nearly 100 high school and middle school athletes sprinting, jogging, and practicing jumps and throws. It’s an idyllic, maybe even inspiring, scene for parents and community members who like to see young people being active.

However, without the passage of last fall’s general obligation bond to repair and upgrade school district facilities, the quickly deteriorating high school track would likely have had to be condemned within a year or two.

At a recent April high school meet hosted by Kennedy, a heavy rainstorm made the latex composition track so slick that at least three boys running the 4 x 400 relay lost their footing and went skidding off the hard, slick track as they passed the batons to their teammates.

The hazards posed by the condition of the track were a striking visual reminder of why voters in the district passed the bond measure with a healthy majority.

Last November, voters in the Mount Angel School District approved a $10.4 million bond to be used for major renovations to the district’s aging buildings.

The heavily-used, aging school facilities are in serious need of repair and updating if Mount Angel schools are going to fulfill their mission of providing positive learning experiences for every student.

School District Superintendent Troy Stoops said the project architects and managers will give the community an update on the progress of the district-wide capital improvements at a meeting Tuesday, May 20, 6 p.m. at Mount Angel Middle School, 460 E. Marquam St.

“This will really be (the public’s) first opportunity to see the progress and find out what’s happening,” Stoops said. “It will be a great opportunity for people to find out how their money is being spent, how it’s being planned, what the issues are that we have run into and the fortunate things that have happened . . . There’s good and bad with any construction project. From my standpoint, the positives have far outweighed the negatives at this point.”

Stoops said the meeting will be at the middle school because “we’re going to have the most information from the middle school (improvements). It’ll be the most advanced, because the high school we’re not going to have anything solid enough to give concrete information. We’ll have concepts and ideas, though. And we’ll be able to share construction schedules.”

Stoops said one major change is that the construction work at the middle school is not going to be done before school starts in September. “It’s now looking more like December before the work is done.”

Stoops said the delay in getting work started at the middle school is the city’s planning review.

“They can’t even give us the actual date of the review,” Stoops said, “because it is new for them and they don’t have a process because they are not used to public property reviews, so they are working with the county. That’s what’s setting us back.”

Stoops said project manager David McKay is still moving forward with construction documents and the bidding process. Construction cannot begin until the site review is complete.

The St. Mary’s project, which involved reconfiguring the traffic pattern and parking, has been approved. Stoops said the design will be displayed at the meeting.

“There are different levels of site review,” Stoops said. “St. Mary’s was a level one site review, so you just go through the regular permitting process.” But the Mount Angel Middle School project appears to be a level two review, which, Stoops said, takes a lot more time.

The delay means that middle school students will have to start the school year with at least two classrooms displaced, and the school office temporarily relocated in a modular building. In addition, the middle school gymnasium will not be available until probably December. PE classes and volleyball will be affected, Stoops said.

“It’s a lot more of adjustment than we expected. We can accommodate it without major interruptions, but it is going to take more effort than what we had planned.”

On the positive side, Stoops notes that the district’s bond sale in January went well and generated additional revenue. The $10.405 million in bonds were sold at a discount of $102,000, which can now be used as a contingency to cover unforeseen costs or to fund project “add-ons.”

The greatest portion of the bond will be used at the high school, which is the oldest school in the district. Stoops said that the outside work on the football field and the track will still be completed this summer, while the much more extensive “in-building” improvements will be undertaken in the summer of 2015.