School contruction projects receive DOD grants

The Oak Harbor School District was recently awarded two sizable grants that would help move students out of portable classrooms into new buildings.

The U.S. Department of Defense awarded the district $66.3 million to fund the construction of Hand in Hand Learning Center and $70.6 million to fund the construction of Crescent Harbor Elementary School.

These projects are estimated to respectively cost, in total, $80.4 million and $84.3 million, at no cost to taxpayers.

Superintendent Michelle Kuss-Cybula said this is a unique opportunity, something that other superintendents around the region and the country react to with shock when she tells them. Even after 30 years in education, she can’t recall a project of this magnitude being debt-free to the community.

“The amount of money it costs to build a school these days is incredible,” she said. “To have it debt-free to the community by grants, in kind, federal and state (funding) … that’s incredible for the country and the state of Washington.”

The schools are the only ones eligible for these grants in the entire school district, mainly because they are located on military installations. However, they also stood out for their precarious conditions.

Crescent Harbor Elementary, built in 1970, and HomeConnection/Hand-in-Hand Early Learning Center, built in 1961, are old, overcrowded and have asbestos. Due to the lack of room, a number of classes are being held in portables that lack proper heating, bathrooms and running water.

In 2019, according to a press release from the Department of Defense, the school buildings were placed on the Deputy Secretary of Defense’s “Public Schools on Military Installations Priority List.” In order to be added to this list, Kuss-Cybula said, the school’s infrastructure needs to be “failing.”

In light of these issues, the buildings were eligible to receive 80% of the construction costs from the Department of Defense, as long as the district could provide a 20% match. After a $121 million bond measure failed to win a supermajority in February 2023, the district secured $27.5 million in state funds in Olympia last year, qualifying for the remaining Department of Defense funding.

The funding was awarded through the department’s Public Schools on Military Installations Program last week, after a Federal Evaluation Team reviewed the projects to ensure the funding appropriately addresses the existing issues.

Still, Kuss-Cybula said, this doesn’t address all of the district’s aging infrastructure, and portables will continue to be used at the other schools. Oak Harbor Elementary, for example, whose main building was constructed in 1948, was not eligible for the federal money and will remain a school with “extreme needs” until the district secures the money to rebuild it.

In the meantime, Communications Officer Sarah Foy said the district will do the best it can with the funds available to ensure students can comfortably learn in the portables. While there is a Capital Facilities Advisory Committee that has been discussing community-based solutions to address the portables issue, there isn’t a robust plan in place due to the lack of funding.

“There’s no quick fix for it,” Foy said.

Kuss-Cybula and Foy said the construction projects are in the prep stage, and workers will break ground — with a ceremony — within the next month or two.