Bend School District offices
The Bend-La Pine school board unanimously approved sending a $250 million bond to voters this fall. The construction bond is intended to cover the costs of 87 projects across Central Oregon’s largest school district, including a major renovation of one of its largest campuses.
“The lion’s share of that [is] going to be focused on the renovation — or reconstruction is probably a better way for me to put it — reconstruction of Bend High,” Superintendent Steve Cook told the school board at its Tuesday meeting.
Five years ago, voters in the Bend-La Pine Public Schools approved a $268 million bond, with much of the money going toward building a brand new high school. Caldera High opened last fall.
Cook assured board members that an upcoming 2022 bond measure would not add to the tax burden for Central Oregon families.
“We believe through the authorization of these funds that we could do this with essentially no impact to the taxes for our patrons,” Cook told board members. He said that’s because payments on existing bonds would go down and the district would be able to refinance its obligations.
“That would be an important consideration.”
The school district strategy to maintain construction funding on an ongoing basis, while avoiding tax increases, is not new in Oregon. Portland Public Schools has been doing something similar as it’s embarked on a districtwide effort to rebuild its aging high schools, most recently with a $1.2 billion bond in 2020.