Tigard-Tualatin School District bond passage would mean new Fowler Middle School, 4 renovated elementaries
Published 5:00 am Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Fowler's extremely busy and crowded hallways would go away if voters approve an upcoming bond measure that would provide funding to build a new school on site. (Staff photo/Jaime Valdez)
Students study in a seventh grade classroom in Pod 1 at Fowler Middle School. (Staff photo: Jaime Valdez)
The chiller room, which serves as an ineffective air conditioning system, is located in a closet off the upper gym. (Staff photo/Jaime Valdez)
Fowler Middle School Principal Cindy Pellicci walks into Pod 1 where seventh grade classes are located. The walls in the pod are not the original walls. That’s because when the school was built, it was designed with an open concept so that each classroom could look into the others. (Staff photo/Jaime Valdez)
If a school bond is passed, Fowler Middle School would be torn down and a new building constructed in either the football or baseball fields. (Staff photo/Jaime Valdez)
The football field surrounded by a track would be one of the possible locations to build a new Fowler Middle School building if an upcoming bond passes. (Staff photo: Jaime Valdez)
Last summer, as Cindy Pellicci prepared to take the reins of Fowler Middle School as its new principal, work crews began addressing decades-old issues with the school’s sewer system after it “basically disintegrated underneath the school.”
“What they did was they jack-hammered and dug a 15-foot-deep trench … from the front of our school, all the way through the commons, out the back (to the) electives hallway and all the way out to Fanno Creek and (rerouted) an entire new sewer line,” said Pellicci, whose resume includes teaching at Fowler for nine years and serving as the first on-track coordinator at Tigard High School.
Pellicci said engineers could even see cracks in the cement floor (where that pipe lay below) as the ground started to move, joking she’s glad she never ended up in a sink hole during her lunch duty.
District seeks $421.3 million measure
Now, the Tigard-Tualatin School District hopes to remedy some of the physical woes of the school built more than a half century ago by tearing it down and rebuilding it in one of the school’s athletic fields, if voters approve a $421.3 million bond measure.
Ballots for the May 20 election, including the bond request, go out Wednesday, April 30. They will ask voters if they’re willing to approve increasing property taxes by about 99 cents per $1,000 of assessed value over the course of two decades — or about $300 annually for a median-priced home.
The construction of a new Fowler High School building would represent roughly one-third of the entire bond package, costing between $125 million to $150 million, according to Alex Pulaski, the district’s interim communications and community relations director.
Last year, the district convened a long-range facility planning committee to look at possible improvements at Fowler, deciding in the end it would be more expensive over time to make repairs than to simply “tear it down and start over,” especially as future construction costs continue to soar.
Cheaper to rebuild now than in a decade
“We thought that in terms of being good stewards of money, we needed to just go into it now, rather than look at a $300 million project 10 years from now,” Pulaski said of Fowler, which was built in 1974.
The bond also would also include extensive renovations to Bridgeport, Byrom, Durham and Mary Woodward elementary schools.
Originally built as an “open concept” school — an educational model that educators believed would lead to a more collaborative and student-centered learning environment — the concept was short-lived at Fowler.
But the school ended up with huge open spaces instead of walled off classrooms, meaning that students and teachers were often distracted by what was going on next to them. While Fowler eventually erected temporary walls to create separate classrooms, they never went all the way to the ceiling and have created ventilation airflow and circulation problems.
Without walls, students get distracted
“These walls have been up because we know that kids get distracted, especially at the middle school age, and we shouldn’t be seeing in to four or five different classrooms at once,” Pellicci said of one school pod during a recent tour.
Another issue at Fowler Middle School has been the small width of its two main hallways when up to 750 students are passing through.
“It’s like Grand Central Station every 44 minutes, and then how long does it take them to settle back down once it’s time for academic learning?” Pellicci asked. “So we take them, we pick them up like a snow globe, we shake them up every 44 minutes and then we ask them to settle down and be in class.”
Meanwhile, when it comes to cooling down Fowler, the problem is the school lacks a bonafide air conditioning system. Instead, the facility relies on what are called “chillers,” which take air and move it over cooled water to reduce inside air temps. The problem is a pump on one of the chillers no longer works and no company makes it anymore. Although there are plans to retrofit the school with a new pump for the chiller unit next month, Pellicci said even when outside temperatures are in the 70s, heat in several classrooms becomes almost unbearable, she said.
If bond passes, new school could open in 2029
If the bond passes, plans are to build the new school on adjacent football or baseball fields while students still attend classes inside Fowler.
“We will continue business as usual here,” she said. “Then when the new school is up and we can move out and into it, they will create (new sports fields).”
Construction would take about two years, with tentative plans of opening the new school building in fall 2029.
