Seismic studies: Are Harbor schools on safe soil?

Mar. 15—Wearing blue hard hats and yellow neon jackets, two technicians stood in the left-field corner of the Hoquiam High School baseball field. District staff and administration watched as a metal pole drove deeper and deeper into the sopping wet ground beneath a bluff.

At the end of the pole, a small cone pushed to its final destination as far as 100 feet underground. At the surface, the technicians struck the metal pole, sending reverberations through the soil and sticky clay.

The goal is to find out how the soil would act if an earthquake sent similar waves through the ground, and if a school would survive on top of it.

Engineers completed similar tests at a dozen sites across Hoquiam School District last month, as the district moves through the first phase of a state effort to retrofit vulnerable schools as seismically stable and provide protection from a potential tsunami.

With so many schools sitting just a few minutes from saltwater, Grays Harbor County schools are among the first in Washington to receive this tsunami and earthquake treatment.

That means first access to about $140 million set aside for the Seismic Safety Grant Program, which is administered by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, to cover most of the costs of planning, design and construction of renovations, brand new schools and tsunami towers.

Of the 14 schools currently receiving seismic grant money from the state, 12 of them are in Grays Harbor.

The plentiful grant money, and the relative exclusive access to it, is a lifeline for districts which struggle to fund large construction projects through taxpayer bonds, forced to prioritize or defer maintenance needs for aging schools under strapped capital budgets.

Now, districts are embarking on historic transformations for school buildings, but it hasn't come without a fair share of uncertainty and skepticism.

"I think we're on the cusp of some really exciting stuff," Hoquiam Superintendent Mike Villarreal told his board of directors at a work session in February. "There's going to be a lot of discussion about it. But I think there's some misinformation out there."

Villarreal was citing discussions he witnessed on social media after the district released an agenda packet containing a contract for a site assessment, which laid out potential places to put a new school. The contract discussed drilling at the high school baseball field, causing some parents to grow concerned that the field would soon be topped with a new school, Villarreal said.

At the work session, Hoquiam School District Board Member Chris Bryson also expressed some concern that the language in the contract moved the district too quickly toward agreeing to build new schools without first considering remodeling existing buildings.

"I'm fine with a new school, if that's what the community wants," Bryson said. "But it would be nice to have the option in writing to upgrade existing."

Before he joined the school board, Bryson was part of a lengthy facilities planning process last summer, when dozens of district parents and staff prioritized which maintenance projects to include in a $42 million dollar bond measure originally slated for the 2024 February special election ballot. Most of the proposed construction work was for Hoquiam High School.

But the board scrapped that proposal late last year after learning the state was ready to proceed with awarding seismic grants to central Grays Harbor districts — an avenue that didn't directly rely on the wallets or votes of Hoquiam residents. It was no longer clear exactly what the future improvements to Hoquiam schools would look like.

The Seismic Safety Grant Program includes four phases: geotechnical analysis, conceptual design, actual design and construction. Site surveys and testing will determine whether a retrofit is possible, or whether a school should be moved because of unstable soils.

There are other parameters, like school age. Buildings must be at least 30 years old to be eligible for replacement, a requirement met by all of Hoquiam's schools.

In addition, the phase two conceptual designs, intended to be developed with public input, have to meet a certain standard of seismic and tsunami safety and get the approval of an OSPI advisory committee before receiving construction funds, said Randy Newman, director of school facilities for the agency. Newman said the committee is working to more sharply define those performance objectives based on engineering standards and communicate them to districts.

Ultimately, Newman said, the decision of building new versus remodeling is "tied back to the district's decision and the age of the school. If it's age eligible, we would look at what the school board of directors wants to do with regards to their facility, because as we know, relocating schools and moving schools is a community decision."

Villarreal said his district plans to gather input from the community during the next design phase.

"That's the cool part," Villarreal said, comparing the process to customizing a brand-new car that someone else is paying for.

North Beach

A Department of Natural Resources assessment of more than 300 schools in Washington revealed many would likely not survive a large earthquake. In reaction the Legislature created the seismic safety program in 2022, supplying $100 million at the outset and adding $40 million the following biennium from the state's capital budget. OSPI has requested $100 million each biennium through the early 2030s.

The law requires the seismic program to cover at least two-thirds of all construction costs. For schools meeting the three-decade age mark, the state's School Construction Assistance Program could provide most of the remaining funding, while local funding could provide a small amount.

That's the case for Pacific Beach Elementary, one of the most seismic and tsunami-vulnerable schools in the state. North Beach School District Board of Directors President Jeff Albertson said relocation of the 70-year-old school was a "foregone conclusion" given the DNR testing from 2018 showed unstable soils while tsunami inundation forecasts put it under water.

Albertson said the district is using planning grant money from the state's seismic program to test the soils at a new location outside the tsunami inundation zone. The assessment will determine whether the district will buy the property, the location of which hasn't been publicly released.

North Beach's relationship with the seismic program started off on shaky ground in early 2023. The school board declined to participate as a pass-through for an $8 million grant for the city of Ocean Shores to build a tsunami tower three-quarters of a mile from Ocean Shores Elementary.

Many public commenters were wary of the speed the proposed agreement seemed to have been put together. Albertson, who voted against partnering with the city to build the tower, told The Daily World he didn't think elementary students would be able to reach it in time following a massive earthquake.

More than a year after that vote, the district is on a path to build a tsunami tower of its own at the elementary school, which isn't old enough to be considered for relocation. Assessments are underway there and at North Beach Junior/Senior High School. The district is waiting on a report that will determine if the soil is stable enough for a tsunami tower, and if the building, built before modern seismic standards, could be made more stable with a simple retrofit.

After receiving those results, the district will lay out plans and budgets before the public, Albertson said.

"We want to ensure that people are bought into those plans and that there's a lot of detail behind those plans that people can inspect," Albertson said.

Unlike the coastal districts, not all schools in central Grays Harbor are at the top of the priority list for OSPI.

In Aberdeen, the school district received money to conduct geotechnical studies at four of its eight main school buildings: Miller Jr. High, AJ West Elementary, Stevens Elementary and the Harbor Learning Center. The original construction for each of those buildings was more than 30 years ago, with several built in the 1950s, but it's still up in the air whether they will be retrofitted, relocated or get a tsunami tower.

Aberdeen School District Superintendent Jeff Thake said in February the district was organizing a committee to assist with planning the seismic projects.

"I found out through our process of our levy that our school buildings are sacred," Thake said in an interview. "Any decision about a retrofit, building a tower or relocation is going to involve a tremendous amount of community input and feedback."

Incidental benefits

The target of the state's seismic program is to protect kids from future disasters. But the timing of its implementation has a lovely byproduct for districts with failing facility systems unrelated to earthquake and tsunami protection.

In Hoquiam, the district voted last year to close Central Elementary School in the next couple of years to consolidate funding for maintenance issues elsewhere. During bond preparations, a committee identified $50 million worth of improvement projects at the high school, including roof replacements and HVAC, security and sprinkler system upgrades.

Thake said some maintenance needs at the Aberdeen School District have potential to be rolled into the seismic grants, while other needs will remain at schools not in the program.

Albertson said the North Beach District has significant shortcomings in heating and cooling systems at schools across the district, especially at Pacific Beach Elementary.

In Cosmopolis, the lone K-6 elementary school is slated to undergo a "pretty intensive" seismic retrofit this summer, said Superintendent Ann Tracey. She said the school's need for a new roof overlapped with plans drawn up for the retrofit.

With construction — replacing pilings, shoring up walls and foundation work — slated to be finished by the start of the 2024-2025 school year, the Cosmopolis school would be the first locally to complete a seismic project through OSPI. Before the Legislature allocated more than $100 million to the program, the school was selected for a pilot program and was awarded an $8 million grant for the retrofit.

Tracey said the scale of the project seemed daunting at first.

"You think, 'How am I going to manage this and still keep the district running at a reasonable, logistical pace?' It's definitely a very overwhelming prospect. But OSPI has been really helpful with every step of that in explaining things and helping, at least me, through the processes, and both our engineers and planning manager have also been phenomenal at giving me great advice."

Albertson also acknowledged the anxiety that comes with large-scale facilities change.

"It's uncomfortable, but it's exciting," he said. "Great facilities don't automatically lead you to have really high performing schools, but they are a contributing factor. "

Contact reporter Clayton Franke at 406-552-3917 or [email protected].