Superintendent touts schools being built with grants

Construction of two new school buildings is well underway for the Oak Harbor School District and local taxpayers are not footing the bill, a boon for the school district unlikely to happen again.

“The government’s not going to come to the rescue of the community again,” Superintendent Michelle Kuss-Cybula said. “This is a twice-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Along with architects, engineers and other school officials, Kuss-Cybula gave U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen a tour of the Crescent Harbor Elementary rebuild on North Whidbey off Crescent Harbor Road on Wednesday. That building, as well as the new Forest Vista Learning Center on Regatta Drive, formerly the HomeConnection/Hand-in-Hand Early Learning Center, were funded entirely by state and federal grants amounting to more than $130 million.

Crescent Harbor and Forest Vista sit on military property, qualifying them to be evaluated and, if necessary, upgraded or rebuilt with funding by the Department of Defense. Both were considered to be in “failing condition” by the DoD’s invitation-only Public Schools on Military Installations program.

Accordingly, both schools were eligible to receive 80% of funding necessary to build their replacements. Early into her now three-year tenure as superintendent, Kuss-Cybula successfully applied for those grants but still needed further funding, and to be “matched” by the community via bond.

In February 2023, Oak Harbor Public Schools failed to secure a supermajority in a vote for a $121 million bond which would have funded the replacement of both schools as well as Oak Harbor Elementary.

“We don’t receive state funding to be able to do these types of projects without some sort of local matching,” Communications Officer Sarah Foy explained. “It’s really difficult in Washington because you have to have (a) 60% supermajority to pass a bond to do any sort of extensive construction like this.”

Kuss-Cybula applied for a nearly $30 million state grant, the Defense Community Compatibility Account, and won, but the grant money had not been budgeted for and therefore could not be awarded.

Flanked by Assistant Superintendent Dwight Lundstrom, Lt. Governor Denny Heck and Patrick J. O’Brien, with the DoD, Kuss-Cybula took the issue to Olympia, where they testified to the grant’s importance concerning the money already at stake.

Had the bond failed and another source of funding been unobtainable, the district could have lost approximately $100 million in federal grants. According to previous News-Times reporting, bond planning began in 2020 and “the Department of Defense gave the district a window of five to seven years to get local support” for the remaining 20% of the funding.

“That’s a lot of money to say no to from the federal government,” Kuss-Cybula said.

And, in Crescent Harbor’s case, quite an outdated building to leave standing. The new school boasts increased security features, like locks, utilizes geothermal technology for heating, is covered with solar panels and is built to mitigate sound — nothing that could be said about the 64-year-old original.

Across town, construction is also underway at Forest Vista, where improvements to the learning center will be just as impactful.

“When you have an aging building,” Kuss-Cybal explained, “it’s a lot of manpower to keep the building going.”

Construction at Crescent Harbor is expected to be completed by the summer or fall of 2027, and construction at Forest Vista expected in the summer or fall of 2026, according to the school district’s website.

“We’re designing the building not just for today, but for tomorrow,” the superintendent added.

Oak Harbor Elementary, Kuss-Cybula stressed, is headed for the same fate as its recently rebuilt counterparts. “We should be closing (the south) building,” she said. “We’re crossing our fingers every day trying to do our best to make sure its safe for kids, but how many years do you keep doing that?”

Broadview Elementary and the Oak Harbor Intermediate School were also mentioned by Kuss-Cybula as needing “upgrades.” None of these schools could benefit from the same grants Crescent Harbor and Forest Vista did, hence the reverence with which the funding of those projects is administered.

Bonds may need to be revisited again in the future should the district pursue upgrades or rebuilds for other facilities, although according to Kuss-Cybula, the district only paid off the last bond it passed — for the high school remodel — two years ago.

Need for improved educational facilities may win out, anyways.

“We can’t keep putting Band-Aids on things,” Foy added.

(Photo by Allyson Ballard) State and federal grants amounting to more than $130 million funded the two projects in their entirety.

(Photo by Allyson Ballard) Principal Architect of NAC Architecture Philip Riedel informed tour attendants of Crescent Harbor’s new features, like the addition of solar panels.