OAK HARBOR: School contruction projects receive DOD grants

Luisa Loi reports from the Oak Harbor School District for the Whidbey News-Times.

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.

They Said It

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.”

…In order to be added to [the Deputy Secretary of Defense’s “Public Schools on Military Installations Priority List,”] Kuss-Cybula said, the school’s infrastructure needs to be “failing.”

…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.