Sagging stoops and doors.

Shifting sidewalks and floors.

Coos Bay School District's aging buildings are suffering from several years without significant maintenance or repair. That's the verdict of a Portland consulting firm, the DRL Group, which specializes in helping businesses, corporations and schools with facility planning. The group recently surveyed all seven of the district's school buildings. It then rattled the School Board with a whopping price estimate to renovate the buildings.

DLR educational facility planners Richard H. Higgins and Cheryl Nevis recommended spending more than $24 million for immediate repairs, upgrades and cosmetic improvements. It's a price that will only grow the longer the district puts it off, Higgins said.

The estimate covers everything from replacing a leaking roof at Sunset Middle School to complying with American Disabilities Act standards for access to all floors and classrooms (see sidebar). That would include installing an elevator at Millicoma Intermediate School for a little more than $400,000.

The School Board met with Higgins and Nevis for a long-range facility planning workshop on June 15, but didn't get far. Wading through repair estimates and haggling over which schools need what, when and why, barely made a dent in the planning process.

“Various elements at all our buildings are eroding,” said Superintendent Dr. Karen Fischer Gray. “I don't know how long we can play catch-up with repairs.”

Higgins opened the discussion by assuring the committee that in spite of the big price tag, school buildings generally are in good shape. The positive tone didn't last long.

“They are old and they need some repairs,” he added.

An observation became understatement when Nevis explained that just replacing the 13-year-old roof at Sunset will cost $2.5 million, despite a typical life span for such a roof expected at closer to 30 years (see sidebar).

“I was there in January and there were two leaks just inside the door,” said committee member Richard Sebesta. “I turned into the library and there were two more in there. It's really bad out there.”

District Business Manager Rod Danielson was quick to point out that the roof's replacement costs far exceed the available money in the district's capital improvement fund, less than $2 million.

There was little argument that Sunset's roof was a critical repair. But more expensive and less critical repairs filled the preliminary report from DLR.

Getting bogged down

Consultants zeroed in on Blossom Gulch Elementary. As is common with heavy buildings built on marshy coastal soil, the foundation and concrete sidewalks have been shifting every year.

The ground beneath Blossom Gulch is unstable. This has caused the building to move slightly, while sidewalks, stairs, stoops and parking lots have shifted a great deal more. The growing distance between the lip of the building and the parking lot is a symptom of a larger problem.

Last year all the toilets in one wing stopped working. Pipes broke below the elementary school. The maintenance and repair crew had to go through the school's floor to locate and repair the break.

“It seems like there's age involved, and of course the building does shift. But it takes the building so long to shift, I would imagine that our plumbing problems weren't strictly related to the shifting,” Gray said.

Short of reconstructing the entire building on top of a structural floor, which would require driving weight-bearing pilings deep into the soil to keep the building and adjacent sidewalks or parking lots stable, there are few solutions. A new school would cost $15 million, but to keep the building in working condition, consultants recommended $2.2 million in immediate renovations and repairs.

“(The shifting ground is) an inherent deal for Coos Bay, or old Marshfield rather,” said Joel Smallwood, district maintenance supervisor, with a chuckle referring to the city's previous name.

“The condition of the building isn't the real problem,” Higgins agreed. “It's the site. From the roof looking down, you can see all of the stoops have separated from the slab.”

Committee members toyed with the idea of closing Blossom Gulch, either temporarily or permanently. But shifting students into the smaller Bunker Hill and Madison elementaries, or the closed Eastside Elementary, made that solution unlikely.

Committee member Kathy Murray asked why Blossom Gulch remained so important to the district. Building a new school in its place would cost $15 million and waste $2 million in repairs to an old building, she added.

School Board members Wally Hazen and Andy Post replied that Blossom Gulch wasn't just an old school, but part of the tradition of neighborhood schools in Coos Bay.

“It's the location that makes Blossom worth keeping. There are enough kids in downtown Coos Bay to need that school,” School Board member Donna Opitz said Thursday.

Taking children out of downtown permanently concerned the superintendent, who said that closing Blossom Gulch - which holds 500 students - would overburden the smaller neighborhood schools.

“(The School Board) is going to look at enrollment projections to see if Madison and Bunker Hill could be redesigned to accept more students, and put more money into a school that isn't slipping away into the ground,” Opitz said.

But the question of which schools receive repairs or are expanded to accommodate more students is an issue that voters might decide should the district seek a bond measure.

Sticky situation

The School Board has passed only two bonds in the last 12 years. In 1994, the voters passed a $1 million bond to repair a collapsed roof at Bunker Hill. In 1997, voters again passed a $9.9 million bond to fund building Pirate Hall at Marshfield, and completing other repair projects.

That bond will be paid off next year and the School Board now is considering its next options.

Gray hesitantly urged the board to consider requesting another bond from the community to fund the repairs and stopped short of recommending an amount.

“Twenty-four million dollars is a big burden for any area in Oregon to bond,” Gray said.

The work is beyond the scale of the day-to-day projects district maintenance staff would handle.

“I think this is a typical symptom that almost all districts are facing right now. Deferred maintenance makes the pool of projects continue to grow,” Smallwood said.

On Thursday, while Opitz said she was not surprised by the costs of repairs, as the previous analysis of school buildings had a similar price tag, she said the board would probably not ask for the entire $24 million.

“I think we're going to have to look at something lower. We're going to have to make some strict priorities, and do repairs in more than one phase,” she said.

Regardless, a bond measure wouldn't be on the ballot until 2007, said School Board Chairman Don Blom.

“You need to build up that community support,” he said, “and that takes about 18 months.”