Nearly a decade since Port Arthur voters approved a $195 million bond, the school district is in its last phase of projects.
With the $153 million spent so far, Port Arthur ISD has completed constructing four new campuses — Sam Houston, Travis and Port Acres elementary schools and the Memorial 9th Grade Center.
The bond’s main goal was to eliminate the 53 portable buildings functioning as classrooms for the Sam Houston and Tyrrell elementary campuses, district Assistant Superintendent for Business and Finance Phyllis Geans told The Enterprise.
“We had a school that was designed for maybe 400 or 500 (students), and then we had almost 1,000 students. So, we didn’t have room for them,” Geans said. “So, portables were brought in. When they ran out of room and needed labs, portables were used for that purpose as well. We had a lot of work ahead of us.”
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The district was growing and had last seen a bond in 2007, Geans said. Persistent maintenance issues were becoming a nuisance for the district, necessitating the bond. With the funding, the district had an opportunity to upgrade previously-overlooked areas, such as purchasing 31 new buses for $3 million and making “significant upgrades” to the district’s technology infrastructure.
“Our technology infrastructure was really outdated,” Geans said. “We upgraded our infrastructure quite a bit — a new phone system, new computers, new lighting, cameras. Technology changes so quickly.”
Since 2014, renovations have taken place across several campuses, including the installation of energy efficient equipment expected to lower maintenance costs. Tyrrell Elementary in 2017 saw the construction of a new library. Other renovations to the campus, such as in the cafeteria, are set to be completed in the current final project phase, Geans said.
Wilson Early College High School was renovated from an “older campus” to a “new, modern-looking facility” that had better functioning classrooms and labs for students, Geans said. Renovations to Wilson were completed about a week prior to Tropical Storm Harvey’s landfall in Southeast Texas in 2017.
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Tropical weather and the COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench or two in the district’s plans, primarily by delaying progress on certain projects, Geans said.
“We had some damages, quite a bit of damages, when (Tropical Storm) Harvey hit,” she said, adding that the district’s administration building, housed in the former Career and Technology Center, suffered some of the worst damage as all the flooring needed to be replaced.
“We were still building on the 9th Grade Center at the time of Harvey. So, we lost building materials and had to replace those,” she said.
The pandemic not only delayed the timeline to complete some projects due to supply chain issues, but also saw the cost of materials increase, Geans said.
“We included some escalation (in the bond) because that went to the voters in 2014 … but escalation now is even greater,” she said. “What we try to do is to look and see what can we eliminate or modify in order to still stay within our bond? We’ve been real successful in cutting down, making changes, but staying within the dollars that were allocated for the purposes of the bond.”
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For example, putting terrazzo flooring in the new buildings might be ideal, but it’s more expensive, leading the district to choose a cheaper, yet still substantial, flooring to provide the same results at a lower cost.
There is approximately $42 million left to be spent with a couple major projects to be completed, including the Support Service Center.
And other final phase have already been completed, such as renovations at Memorial Stadium and a new running track at Lincoln Middle School.
Right now, the district’s transportation, shipping and receiving and maintenance departments are scattered across Port Arthur, but the district wants to centralize those offices, among others, into one location, Geans said. Across the street from the administration building on 9th Avenue sits the future home of the Support Service Center, the old Bishop Byrne High School that was most recently owned by Christus Southeast Texas and used as an outpatient facility.
“If we centralize (those departments), it would help us and then we could gain some synergies, too, with things like your forklift, because you’re going to need a forklift for several of those departments,” she said.
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The district is also exploring opening its print shop to the public once it is up and running.
Geans said the district is hoping to finish the building within the next year-and-a-half. Limited property demolition, tree removal and mold remediation have already been completed, she said.
“We did a walkthrough (about a month ago) with the subcontractors to see exactly who wanted to bid on the project, and now they’ve gotten the bids and so we’re in the process of getting what they call the ‘GMP,’ the guaranteed maximum price (the highest amount a customer would pay for a project),” she said. “We should be getting that back in the next few weeks and once we get the GMP, we’re ready to start.”
Other projects left to be completed include public address system, security lighting and camera updates at Wheatley Early Childhood and DeQueen and Washington elementary schools.
Lakeview and Adams elementary schools are awaiting classroom capacity expansions, and repairs are currently being made to the auditoriums at Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson middle schools.
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When the district set out to do the bond, they knew it would be done in phases, Geans said, adding that they always tried to be realistic with expectations.
“We didn’t have a timeline that said, ‘By this year, we will have everything done,'” she said. “Our issue was, first thing, let’s get all of these kids out of these portables as fast as we can. With the hurricanes and all the other issues, it took longer than you would expect. We didn’t put a stipulation that by such and such date, everything would be done which I think made it easier. Because we’re not trying to be unrealistic with the public.”
Geans said that the improvements the district has made over the past decade are expected to last a while and have and will continue to improve students’ learning environments.
“You love to see the kids focusing on learning rather than focusing on (their classrooms being) too hot,” she said. “When we built the new schools, we designed them (intuitively to meet their needs).”