Redmond School District has begun discussing a move to close Redmond High School and combine its students with those at Ridgeview High.

The consolidation would allow the district to make desperately needed repairs at Redmond High, where aging pipes are crumbling and sometimes leak “pink goo.” If the schools merge, the district would like to use Redmond High for administrative offices, but repairs would cost millions of dollars.

The consolidation is contingent on passage of a bond that the school board may put before voters in November 2024.

According to district officials, combining the two high schools in the current Ridgeview building would leave the district with facilities in line with projected enrollment and staffing. It would avoid duplicated classes, allow all students to access those classes and reduce operation costs and water use. The district also operates Redmond Proficiency Academy, a charter high school downtown.

According to the district, Ridgeview has the space necessary to house current Redmond High students. Ridgeview was built in 2012 to serve roughly 1,600 students, but there are currently only 800 enrolled — roughly the same number currently attending Redmond High.

Combining Redmond and Ridgeview, would not begin until 2026.

Michael Summers, chair of the Redmond School Board, said there are still many hurdles moving forward before any real decisions are made, but he thought the idea was worth considering.

“The more we have looked into it, the more I am actually very excited about it,” said Summers. “I think there are some really great opportunities for it. But we don’t have cost estimates; we don’t have plans drawn up for potential new buildings that would potentially take place at Ridgeview if we did combine the schools.”

Redmond School District Superintendent Charan Cline said projections show the district adding about 500 children at the elementary level in the next decade, but losing about 2% of its high school population over that same time period.

“That doesn’t make sense to anyone in this room, because we’re growing like crazy as a town,” Cline told Redmond School Board members on Thursday. “But we have a lot of retired folks moving to this area and demographically we’re not having as many kids — across the United States and across the world.” The biggest issue facing the district is the condition of Redmond High School, which opened to students in 1971. Cline and Assistant Superintendent Tony Pupo said Redmond High is in urgent need of a new HVAC system, which could cost up to $10 million and take up to a year to complete.

Cline said the boilers at Redmond High have to be on all the time in order for the school to function. It costs $120,000 to run that system every year, double the normal energy costs, according to Cline.

“If you turn off the boilers at any one time and cool off the system, all of the fittings on the pipes start shrinking and they leak. And it starts leaking water with a rust inhibitor in it, and it kind of looks like a pink goo, and it leaks all over the place because the system itself is in bad shape,” Cline said. “And we know it was a problem. And we have $5 million from our last bond and we started getting in there to start working on it.”

Cline said the district learned the pipes in the ceiling at Redmond High were basically crumbling into pieces. The ceiling is covered in a fire retardant made with asbestos. The asbestos, a highly dangerous material once commonly used in construction, will have to be removed once construction begins, said Cline.

“Meaning we would have a hard time having kids in that space for a year,” he said. “That is the big problem.”

Cline said the district renovated about half of Redmond High School in 2008, after passage of an earlier bond. The other side of the building — which includes the theater, music space and career technical education area — wasn’t modernized. Cline said there are three possibilities for moving forward.

“First option: We don’t close it and we just continue to Band-Aid the current system together. That has a time-limited solution and at some point we will experience a catastrophic failure. We don’t think that is a good idea, but we could continue to patch it together.

“Option two: We purchase a whole bunch of portable classrooms and put them out on the green space; we set up a big circus tent that we have and we eat lunches out there.”

The third option is to move all the students to Ridgeview for academic programs and bus them back to Redmond for Career Technical Education and athletic programs, said Cline.

As part of the reconfiguration and bond measure a new career and technology education building could be built on 16 acres of district-owned land near Ridgeview High School property. That project could begin in 2025 and take about a year to complete.

David Burke, director of secondary programs at the school district and a parent with high school students in the district, believes this is a good time to discuss some of these ideas as a community.

“I think there is a great opportunity there. But I also think there are a lot of details that people need to weigh in on and discuss, and the community needs to discuss what’s best for Redmond,” Burke said.

Burke said his son is in a construction technology class at Redmond High, a course that is constantly full and difficult to get into. A new career and technology education building at Ridgeview, Burke said, could expand the district’s offerings in those subjects.

“It would be helpful to have a bigger space for kids to build larger projects,” Burke said. “As demand has grown for students to take CTE courses … building some facilities that could grow with that is the concept we are exploring.”

Board Chair Summers said he viewed the proposal as a way to create better opportunities for students. He said the reconfiguration would allow the district to expand athletic and educational offerings.

“It is very much not a reduction for students or for the area. It is actually consolidating and expanding the amazing facility that we have at Ridgeview and really making it to where our Redmond students have a campus that would rival any in Bend and better career technical ed,” Summers said.