UNION — The COVID-19 pandemic is taking a terrible toll on schools everywhere, but it is not derailing plans for the Union School District’s bond project work — at least not yet.

Work will start next month with the replacement of the roof on Union Elementary School’s J.F. Hutchinson classroom building. The building’s roof is about 20 years old and needs replacing, said Mendy Clark, the district’s deputy clerk and a member of its bond design team.

Phase I of the bond project will continue this summer when crews remove the Hutchinson building’s old windows and install more energy-efficient ones. A third bond project, which has not been finalized but may be done this summer, would be the painting of the Hutchinson building, Clark said.

Money for the projects come from the $4 million bond for maintenance and capital construction Union voters approved in November and a $4 million matching grant from the state’s Oregon School Capital Improvement program.

Union School District Superintendent Carter Wells said the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to the closure of all school buildings in Oregon, is not interfering with the district’s bond project. However, he said, the coronavirus pandemic could later affect the availability of materials and cause their prices to rise or fall.

The Hutchinson upgrades will be just the start of the bond project work over the next three years. The others, which the bond design team continues to plan, include work on making the Union School District’s buildings more accessible and improving heating and ventilation systems.

High on the design team’s priority list is the installation of an elevator at Union High School. The elevator will be available for people with mobility issues.

“We want people to be able to access the building with dignity,” Wells said.

Another high priority accessibility project, Clark said, involves the high school gym. The design team wants a ramp outside the north entrance and a wider vestibule to make it easier for people to enter the gym. Preliminary plans call for seating inside the gym to meet the needs of those with mobility issues, Clark said.

A third accessibility project under consideration is the restoration of the cracked old steps leading into the high school’s grand east entrance. which features iconic columns. This served as the main entry way into Union High School, built around 1912, for decades before its doors were closed to the public as a safety precaution to prevent people from using the deteriorating steps.

Clark said restoring the steps to allow the historical main entrance to reopen would boost security because people who enter would go past the school’s offices, allowing staff to better monitor who enters the high school.

The design team also is looking at altering the main entrance in the elementary school’s S.E. Miller building. It is presently on the southwest side of the building off its playground. This is far from ideal because it means children have to walk from a drop-off point through the parking lot between the building and the high school to get into their school. The design team is studying the possibility of moving the main entrance of the S.E. Miller building to the middle of the east side of the building and installing a sidewalk that would run from Union’s Main Street west about 50 yards to the new entrance. Children would not have to walk through the parking lot, and those who drop them off would be able to see them enter the school, Clark said.

Members of the design team include school district staff, project architects, contractors and the bond project manager. The team shares all of its proposals with the school district’s staff and its bond oversight committee to for their approval, and the Union School Board has the final say.

Wells said the proposed bond projects are creating a sense of excitement in the school district during an uncertain time.

“It is really phenomenal that we are able to move forward (on the bond project),” he said.

The superintendent said he believes major progress will be made in the summer of 2021.

“I am very, very optimistic that when students get back to school in the fall of 2021 they will see significant improvements in the school district,” Wells said.