Yakima School District committee recommends replacing Hoover Elementary

YAKIMA – When construction of the original Hoover Elementary School building was completed in 1948, Harry S. Truman was president, singer Rick James was a newborn and “Howdy Doody” had just premiered. In the seven decades since, generations of students, teachers and other staff have gone through the campus.

But parts of the school have fallen into disrepair, district officials said. Classrooms suffer blown fuses when too many students try to plug their laptops into outdated outlets. The HVAC system is antiquated, but the building cannot support newer models. Cracks and dips in the blacktop make part of the playground unusable during snowy months.

Some spaces in the crowded school have been reconfigured to serve new functions, like the closet that serves as an assistant principal’s office.

“Space is gold at Hoover,” Principal Julio Sanchez said.

These conditions put replacing the school at the top of Yakima School District’s facilities projects priority list. Other top priority projects include improving accessibility at elementary school playgrounds around the district and developing a fastpitch softball field at Davis High School. New buildings for Garfield, McKinley and Nob Hill Elementary School also ranked highly.

If the district wants these built, it must decide how to bring these construction project proposals to the community because they would require voter approval of new bond measures.

Prioritizing facilities

The Capital Facilities Advisory Committee developed the priority list and project proposals for the district after about six months of research and discussion. The committee was made up of educators, administrators and community members from across Yakima.

Committee members toured YSD campuses to get a sense of which sites were most in need of renovations. They also toured new school buildings in the Selah School District. Seeing the differences between campuses highlighted the disparity, committee member Randy Beehler said.

“It’s not just a matter of upgrading. It’s a matter of equity,” he said at the committee’s April 12 meeting.

Research shows that students who attend class in old, run down or neglected buildings perform worse in educational assessments.

Committee member Leslie Cornejo said it was disheartening to see the conditions at some of the district’s oldest schools, especially as a parent. She described Selah’s new schools as welcoming, calming and stress-free places where kids could focus on learning.

“All of our kids deserve that,” she said.

The committee identified the four highest-priority schools in the district and received estimated costs for constructing new buildings at those campuses.

It also received estimates for projects to build a fastpitch softball field at Davis and to make district playgrounds more accessible, as recommended by District Special Education Director Nancy Smith.

The committee also considered possible district projects for further down the line, including modernizing or replacing the buildings at Adams, Barge-Lincoln and Robertson elementary schools and Wilson and Lewis and Clark middle schools.

Financing the projects

Superintendent Trevor Greene accepted the facilities projects proposal at the April 12 committee meeting. Now, the district can devise a strategy to present these projects to voters.

These types of large construction projects are funded using bonds, which require 60% voter approval to pass.

Voters passed YSD’s most recent bond proposal in 2009. It allowed the district to use $114 million in bonds for renovations at the district’s high schools. The district has refinanced these bonds in recent years to take advantage of favorable interest rates and save money.

The estimated cost for the top three prioritized projects comes out to about $98 million, according to committee documents. That includes the following estimates:

• $93.5 million to replace Hoover Elementary School. That includes $81.5 million in local funding and a $12 million state match.
• $2 million to improve accessibility to playgrounds at all district elementary schools.
• $2.5 million to acquire land and develop a fastpitch softball field for Davis HS.

Other high priority replacement projects came with the following estimated costs:

• $90.8 million for Garfield Elementary
• $78.8 million for McKinley Elementary
• $78.7 million for Nob Hill Elementary

These estimates are based on 2022 construction costs and account for an inflationary factor of 6% per year, according to committee documents.

For school building projects, the state provides some funding once a bond is passed, but the majority comes from local taxpayers.

In 2023, the total educational tax rate for homeowners within the district boundaries is $3.09 per $1,000 of assessed value on a person’s home, according to YSD’s Interim Executive Director of Finance Jake Kuper. Of that, $1.03 came from bonds.

Kuper estimated that if a $200 million bond passed in 2024, the total tax rate would increase to $4.26 per $1,000 of assessed value on a person’s home in 2025.

He pointed out that before the McCleary school funding court decision took effect and restructured the ways schools are financed, the total tax rate was $4.51 in the district’s boundaries.

Next steps

These projects are theoretical and the district does not have a bond proposal for them.

After the April 12 meeting, Superintendent Greene said the next steps are for him and his team to thoroughly review the proposal and put together a project plan to present to the school board. The board must accept the plan before it would go on the ballot.

“There are a lot of opportunities to think about how we move forward with the community,” Green said during the meeting. “I can say right now that I cannot imagine going forward and saying, ‘Let’s replace all four of these schools with a bond measure.’ ”

The proposed school projects could be broken up into multiple bonds over time, he said.

The earliest date a bond related to these projects could be on the ballot is Nov. 7. But the resolution filing date for that election is in August. Greene suspected it would be difficult to solidify a proposal by then.

“I would anticipate that the earliest we would run a bond would be in February of 2024,” Greene said.

Hopes for Hoover

Principal Sanchez said the staff at Hoover has done a great job of making do with the resources they have and finding creative ways to keep classes going, even when things literally fall apart.

But he has concerns about the impact of the schools’ failing infrastructure on his students and staff. He questioned how much instructional time is lost because students have to walk from one far classroom to another. To traverse the campus takes about 3½ minutes, and that adds up over a 180-day school year. Students and teachers also have to occasionally relocate when a power outage or HVAC issue renders classrooms uninhabitable.

He also expressed worries about safety and emergency incident response times, given the size of the campus.

The school has undertaken some improvement efforts in the past few years, like adding a soccer pitch and repainting play equipment. And the district provides support to fix immediate needs like peeling floors and dangerously cracked walkways, Sanchez said.

“The district has done a good job of keeping the building functional,” Deputy Superintendent Rob Darling said. “But beyond functional, it’s really a struggle.”

YSD Communications Director Kirsten Fitterer said directing so many resources toward emergency maintenance situations diverts them from the regular upkeep of other facilities.

The patches do not address the larger, structural issues on the Hoover campus and at schools like it.

The school of about 600 students is the heart of the surrounding community, Sanchez said. Community members can use the school grounds, including the play area, after classes and programs end each day. Neighbors keep an eye on the school and report potentially suspicious activity.

He believes that a new school building would improve morale not only for Hoover’s students and staff but for the entire community. He saw it when the school got a new playground and he hopes to see it again when the school gets a new building.

“It’s hard to put in words, but when you see the student’s smile, it’s priceless,” he said.