A light agenda allowed the Corvallis School Board to adjourn earlier than usual Monday night, but not before a wide range of ideas were shared about how the district ought to manage and improve its facilities and what responsibility it has to share those facilities with the community at large.

The bulk of the two-hour meeting was spent on a report from business services director Kathy Rodeman and facilities manager Kim Patten on the progress of building improvements across the district as the final monies from an $86 million bond measure approved by voters in 2002 are spent.

Several of the projects dealing with athletic facilities, which have been on hold until the weather improves, should be completed by the end of summer, Patten said. The track at Cheldelin Middle School will be refurbished, including a reconfiguration from 440 yards to 400 meters, and six tennis courts will be constructed at Corvallis High School.

The district's maintenance staff, in consultation with a new athletic field design firm, plans to redo much of the CHS softball field which was left undone by the original contractor, Robinson Construction of Hillsboro. Six inches of the infield's topsoil will be removed, followed by a resurfacing and grading of the playing surface, Patten continued.

New playground equipment will be installed at Jefferson Elementary School, but resurfacing of the playgrounds at Adams and Lincoln schools will be postponed until a district-wide asphalt survey is completed by Devco Engineering to determine if asphalt is the best surface to use.

Other improvements slated for completion before school starts in the fall are new roofing at Adams Elementary School, new flooring in the Crescent Valley High School kitchen, a scaled back repaving of Crescent Valley's northeast parking lot near the track and field grading and reseeding at the Westland demolition site.

Board members questioned a decision to pull back from upgrading at least two restrooms at every school in the district to only replacing surfaces and fixtures at the most outdated restrooms. Patten explained that the high cost of new flooring in bathrooms at Hoover and Lincoln elementary schools, Cheldelin and both high schools because of sanitary concerns prohibited them from renovating the other restrooms this year.

Another update on the role of the Facilities Advisory Committee led to another discussion about the district's gyms and playing fields. "One of the issues that's been building over the years is the demand for use of our buildings outside the school day," said Rodeman as she outlined recent deliberations by the committee.

The Boys & Girls Club of Corvallis and the city's Parks and Recreation Department have been asked to give their input on what the community's needs are when it comes to recreational facilities and how they might work with the school district to provide more space for both youth and adult activities, Rodeman said. "Hopefully, those recommendations will come in June," she added.

Some have suggested the district should allow for the development of playing fields on the Westland site, Rodeman reported. But the district's Long Range Facilities Master Plan recommends the site should not be improved for recreation purposes so that it can be retained as a future school site.

"Once people see a park then it's difficult for them to understand it's a school site that belongs to the district," Rodeman said, adding similar issues have arisen near the Garfield school site.

Board member Bill Ten Pas, participating in the meeting by phone from California, expressed a concern about security and liability issues if district properties were used all the time by the general public.

"For some reason, the school district has been the body everybody looks to to provide more facilities for the community, but our No. 1 priority is educating our students," Ten Pas said. "We have to look at our resources vs. demand."

The district has changed, board member Helen Higgins said, and "when it closed schools, it took gyms away from the community."

But maybe the city needs to shift from purchasing more green space to funding more indoor recreational spaces for children and adults, she added.

Others expressed ideas about installing AstroTurf fields and the possibility of the city and school district jointly proposing a bond measure to build more recreational facilities before the meeting came to a close. All agreed, however, that ongoing conversations with the city and other organizations were important.

"It's a matter of meshing priorities and hopefully, we can find common ground," said board chair Blake Rodman.