World Photo by Lou Sennick Joel Smallwood, maintenance manager for the Coos Bay School District, shows a set of stairs behind Millicoma Intermediate School that needs to be replaced with an American with Disabilities Act-compliant ramp to the street below.

COOS BAY — From a distance, the buildings in the Coos Bay School District look fine. They stand in their familiar locations, lending a sense of permanence to their surrounding neighborhoods.

There is a cost to having these educational landmarks. They get old.

At closer inspection, Coos Bay’s schools show troubling signs. Doors are patched together with plywood. Paint is chipping from exterior walls.

The pirate’s face adorning Marshfield High School’s gym still looks sharp, but cracks surrounding the logo from water damage. And inside are antiquated electrical and heating systems that are difficult to repair because replacement parts are no longer made.

“When you are inside, it’s getting embarrassing,” said school board member Wally Hazen.

The district has decided it is time to retire two of its elementary school facilities. It also wants to make additional repairs to other school buildings, particularly at Marshfield High School.  So the board has put a $59.95 million bond measure on the November ballot.

The decision came after an architectural company analyzed the district’s buildings and found lots of leaks, antiquated electrical systems and other delayed repairs.

The school board-appointed committee spent several months discussing how to address those problems and came up with a recommendation to build new schools at Madison Elementary School and the former Eastside School. There also will be significant repairs at other schools.

New schools

The big ticket items are the two new schools. Each would cost about $20 million. The decision to build was based on a demographic shift in the district’s populations as well as on the state of the buildings.

Madison is already very full, Hazen said. There was talk of adding classrooms in addition to making repairs. But the cost of adding onto the building was so great — about $10 million — that it made more sense to build a new school. Although the district would need $20 million in the short term, a new school would require very little maintenance in future years.

Rebuilding Eastside school, which was closed earlier in the decade, was part of the original plans of the Schools for the Future committee. Ron Opitz, the group’s co-chairman, said phone surveys found a lot of support for re-opening Eastside. It also would meet the demand of a growing student population in the eastern part of the district.

Costs & Benefits

Opitz said this cost will result in improvements in the classroom in several ways. Improvements in heating and ventilation will provide a more comfortable environment for students, which will make it easier to learn. There also will be less routine maintenance, which means more money going toward teaching.

And since new buildings are more energy efficient, there will be some energy savings, though it’s impossible to quantify, said Danielson.

“Each school has a life cycle and these are way beyond it,” Optiz said. “It’s time.”