Oakville Elementary School won’t need to worry about its roof for at least 20 more years thanks to approximately $750,000 in funding secured for the roof’s replacement in last year’s state capital budget.
Less than a year after receiving that funding, Centralia Superintendent Lisa Grant and Facilities and Maintenance Director Eric Wilson proudly showed Rep. Peter Abbarno, R-Centralia, the mostly-finished roof last week.
“It’s one of the faster capital budget turnarounds I’ve seen,” Abbarno said during a tour of the elementary school on Feb. 22.
The Centralia School District renovated a large section of the elementary school in the mid-to-late 2000s after a fire destroyed half of the school in May 2006.
“Most of the building was renovated, and fast,” Abbarno said. “But the other part that wasn’t quite included was the roof on the other end.”
That section of the roof hadn’t been touched since at least the 1970s, when a round of renovations took place at the school. The wing itself was built in the late 1920s, according to previous Chronicle reporting.
As the assistant ranking minority member on the Capital Budget Committee, Abbarno was able to reach out to the Centralia School District when he found out there was “a bit of a hiccup in one of the broadband issues” that resulted in some unallocated funding within the capital budget.
“We were a day before the budget was passing on the floor,” Abbarno recalled. “So I called Lisa and … we put our heads together to find, ‘what are some of the needs for the district?’ Because otherwise, that money would have been reabsorbed into broadband. It wouldn’t have been in our community.”
Replacing the half of the Oakview Elementary School roof that wasn’t damaged in the fire was at the top of the Centralia School District’s short list of needed capital projects at the time.
Built in the 1920s, the undamaged wing is among the oldest facilities in the Centralia School District and the old roof was at the end of its lifespan.
By adding a small amount of its own capital reserves to the state funding, the district was able to fully replace the old roof as well as a sidewall that was a concern for the district’s maintenance department.
The district is currently developing a long-term facility plan “to look at, if we save every year, how do we build so that we don’t end up with a really long list (of facility needs) that we can’t manage,” Grant said.
The goal of that plan, Grant said, “to be good stewards and to extend the life of our buildings.”
Letting those facility needs worsen until it would be more cost-effective to build a new school is a bad financial decision, Grant said, as new elementary schools now cost on-average $27 million to build.
“That used to be a high school. Now it’s an elementary school,” Grant said.
Instead, the district intends to place a small amount of its general fund into the capital fund every year to fund facility repairs and renovations.
“We haven’t shared all the details with the board yet, but our intent is to start with critical issues,” Grant said.
One of the reasons behind making the facilities plan is so the district can figure out how to fund capital improvements without asking voters to approve a bond.
Unlike levies, capital bonds require a supermajority of 60% of the vote plus one to pass.
With the district’s history of levy failures, administrators felt proposing a capital bond measure was not a feasible option.
“There are certain grants out there for, like, changing your lighting out. Those are small pieces that add up, but they don’t address when you need a new building or a new roof,” Grant said. “We’re trying to figure those pieces out.”
Proposals aimed at addressing how school districts receive state funding are making their way through the state Capital Budget Committee, Abbarno said.
“I don't know whether or not they're actually going to pass into law versus incorporated within the capital budget,” he said, later adding, “What is clear, is that property poor districts like Centralia — there's a lot of them in the state — whether you're talking about a levy or you're talking about a bond, I think that the gap between property poor and property rich districts is growing.”
For example, Abbarno said a district in a place with high property values like King County can raise its levy by “pennies” and still collect more than a district with lower property values going for a more-significant levy increase.
“So then you have less money going to students here and more money going to students there,” Abbarno said. “It’s just a bad way, I think, to manage an education system where you can see the disparity growing.”
Abbarno added, “I'm committed to continuing to try to advocate for making smart investments, which I think a smart investment, a good investment, is in your local schools.”
The Centralia School District operated without levy dollars between December 2020 and the 2022 levy collection cycle — leading to layoffs last summer — after multiple attempts to pass a replacement levy failed at the ballot box.
A proposal to renew the district’s operations levy at a higher amount failed 52.25% to 48.85% on the February special election ballot.
In April, the Centralia School District will make its second and final attempt to pass a levy proposal before the existing levy expires at the end of the year.
