The Owyhee Combined School has served generations of students from the Duck Valley Indian Reservation. But the old schoolhouse has fallen into disrepair and it may be contaminated by an underground chemical plume.
Tribal officials say it’s a threat to student safety which is why state lawmakers set aside $64.5 million to replace it.
Even with the funding, Elko County School District superintendent C.J. Anderson said a request for proposals failed to get any offers.
“In the end, there were no bids,” he said.
Anderson explained the Elko district, which operates the school, rarely gets more than a couple of bids on any project. That’s partially because it’s harder to build in the rurals.
“There’s only so many contractors, whether it’s locally or semi-regionally, that are willing to bid on projects in our locale… There’s additional costs when you’re not a local contractor.”
The community of Owyhee, which is near the Nevada-Idaho border, is even further removed.
The district is also reeling from the loss of a decades old tax set-aside to support building and maintaining school facilities.
For decades, Elko schools built and maintained their facilities through what was known as “pay-as-you-go” funding, which diverted 75 cents for every $100 of property taxes collected by the county. It did not levy additional taxes, but local residents voted against its renewal in 2020.
Then, the following year, voters rejected a bond measure that would have replaced some of the lost funding.
Anderson said the sudden loss of the district’s capital improvement budget meant they weren’t able to supplement the state funding for the Owyhee Combined School’s replacement.
“When contractors started to look at this project, it’s our understanding that they started to see it and say, ‘There’s no way we can do this,’” he said.
District officials plan to solicit more bids for the work, but Anderson couldn’t give a firm date for when that might happen. In the meantime, he said, they’re working with state leaders to try and find a solution.
