The Ocean Beach School District will host a virtual presentation this Wednesday to provide an update on its efforts to erect a seismic- and tsunami-safe campus in Ilwaco for grades 6-12 that would predominantly be paid for by a state-funded grant.

The Zoom presentation is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. on June 18, with participants hearing from OBSD officials and the team of architects that has been hired — courtesy of state funds — to conceptualize and design the proposed building. It’s the latest in a series of community meetings that the district and Mahlum Architects have held in recent weeks to boost local engagement, with previous in-person presentations taking place in Ocean Park and Ilwaco.

OBSD is currently slated to receive about $90 million in funding through the state’s School Seismic Safety grant program, which was established in 2022. The program provides funds to school districts to cover at least two-thirds of the construction cost of retrofitting or relocating schools situated in high seismic areas or tsunami inundation zones.

Last fall, the district was awarded $3.1 million last October from the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to fully fund conceptual and schematic design work, and in the spring OBSD’s request to combine the design and construction phases of the project into a single contract was approved by the state Department of Enterprise Services, clearing the way for the hiring of a general contractor.

The district may need to run a bond measure at some point to fund any costs for the new building that the state says it won’t cover, as well as other maintenance and construction upgrades at other OBSD schools and facilities. The state dollars can only fund construction for work on “educational” school spaces, which do not include the likes of athletic fields or transportation facilities.

Visit https://tinyurl.com/36kjshv4 to join the virtual meeting.