Archuleta School District administrators reported that four of its campuses are in need of wide-ranging structural improvements on Tuesday evening at Pagosa Springs High School, where community members and district staff gathered to discuss the condition and future of their school facilities.
It was the first of several community information and feedback sessions the district has planned for the coming weeks and months as it processes the results of an assessment it commissioned earlier this year.
The results of that assessment, performed by a Colorado Springs-based architectural firm specializing in educational projects, were shared with the district on Oct. 14 and recommended significant facility upgrades at the elementary, middle and high schools, as well as San Juan Mountain School.
On Tuesday, Superintendent Rick Holt detailed the recommended upgrades at each campus and sought community input as the district begins drafting a new facilities master plan.
“We’re going to do what you tell us to do,” Holt said. “What the community says is the next best step for us. That’s our job: to execute the community’s vision.”
Summarizing findings that scrutinized each of the schools’ educational adequacy — essentially a measure of academic efficiency — Holt described learning spaces that lag behind current standards, and specifically called attention to small, inflexible classrooms ill-equipped for today’s technology; the lack of access to daylight and outdoor activity spaces; as well as further considerations for larger, whole-school spaces like libraries, cafeterias and gymnasiums.
“This is just talking about the academic side of things,” Holt said, before inviting the district’s director of operations, Josh Sanchez, to share what findings were uncovered when the school facilities were evaluated for safety and security, as well as structural soundness.
While major improvements have been made since the district underwent a similar assessment in 2018, with $4.6 million allocated to capital projects since then, Sanchez reported that the aging buildings are requiring more frequent, often costly, repairs.
“That’s approximately $750,000 per year … that we are putting towards updating, upgrading systems within our schools,” Sanchez said. “But we are seeing, of course, increasing mandatory repair projects [and] rising costs for those repair projects.”
“That’s just going to keeping our buildings open and functioning,” Holt later added.
Projects like those, Sanchez explained, prevent the district from accomplishing “the choice projects we may want to do.”
He offered an example of a water line that broke two weeks before the start of a recent school year.
“We’re definitely seeing now that the plumbing infrastructure is starting to show its age,” he said. “We’re seeing a rising number of … emergency projects that are happening.”
According to the assessment, other structural areas needing “immediate attention” include improvements to traffic control and mechanical systems at the elementary and middle schools, new boilers, upgraded outdoor spaces and new interior windows.
“At the middle school — this is a fun one — the sewer lines down the hallway are starting to bow and are becoming a very big problem,” Sanchez continued. “That is one we need to look at very soon, because we don’t want any of that backup happening, but it is starting to back up.”
The high school roof, which on Tuesday night emitted groans administrators couldn’t immediately explain, was also among the items listed in the assessment as needing replacement or repairs in the next three to five years.
Considering the short- and long-term needs of the schools, Holt asked the community to engage in a frank conversation with the district about charting a way forward.
“Just like your grandpa’s favorite car that you might have driven for a long time — you put new tires on it and put new wipers on it, maybe went so far as to replace the exhaust system — it’s time for us to seriously discuss what’s it going to take to replace the engine,” he said. “The transmission, the electrical system — things now that are worth more than the entire car. Those are the types of repairs that are coming [up] for us as a community.”
To help frame that conversation, the district is asking community members to participate in an online survey about the schools, and invited them to two additional information sessions.
The survey, available through Nov. 22, can be found at www.surveymonkey.com/r/3W6FYHY.
Additional information sessions, which administrators anticipate will cover much of the same ground as Tuesday’s gathering, are scheduled for 6 p.m. on Nov. 13 and Nov. 14 at Pagosa Springs Middle School and Pagosa Springs Elementary School, respectively.
By January, Holt explained, the district hopes to share the outcome of the sessions as well as those conducted with school staff, then gather additional community feedback from February through April, with a more defined plan possibly arriving in the spring.
For those in attendance on Tuesday, questions around the cost of building new schools versus maintaining existing ones quickly surfaced.
“What we’re trying to show is that doing repairs for the next three to five years is a real unmanageable situation,” Holt replied, “but we’re also here to listen to the community.”
Asked if the state might contribute dollars toward potential new school constructions, Holt replied in the negative, and explained that grant funds available in years past are no longer as readily accessible.
“There isn’t funding like [there] was 10 years ago,” he said. “The harsh reality is that it’s pretty limited compared to what the state used to offer.”
If the community and district opted for new construction, Holt indicated the funding would likely come from a tax bond.
He declined to share an estimate of what it might cost to address all the repairs uncovered by the recent assessment.
“I want to talk about dollars and cents in the spring,” he said. “I really want the community to get on board with the idea that we need to do something. Could we agree on what that is, and then we can figure out how we’re going to do it?”
Resident and retired educator Bob George, who explained his grandchildren attend schools in the district, indicated the path ahead is clear.
“Band-Aids don’t work,” he said. “We need replacements.”
garrett@pagosasun.com
