Rancho Bernardo High and Bernardo Heights Share One Cooling Plant. Here's Where Its Replacement Stands

Why would a school district lay more than 15,000 feet of new cooling pipe across two campuses before it has bought the chiller that sends cold water through it?

At Rancho Bernardo High School and Bernardo Heights Middle School, money sets the order of the work. Poway Unified is paying for the job in pieces, from accounts it already controls. The piping finished this summer was the piece it could cover. The central plant comes next, and it is the larger and less settled piece. The November 3 ballot will not include a Poway Unified facilities bond to fund it.

One Plant, Two Campuses, Five Years on One Chiller

Both campuses get their heating and cooling from a single central plant. It makes chilled water and hot water and pipes them to air handling units at each school. That plant went in back in 1988 with two 250-ton chillers. This is how it broke down, according to district officials and the project architects:

1. 2017: Electrical problems start.
2. 2022: One of the two chillers stops working, which district officials called a major mechanical failure.
3. By August 2025: A representative of Architects Moser Drew tells trustees that one chiller is out and the other is running below capacity and leaking. He put the cost of running the broken system at $350,000, about three times what the energy should cost.
4. Fall 2025: The district reports that most of the central plant equipment no longer works. Leaks in the underground chilled-water pipes keep the air handlers from cooling as needed, and a rented temporary chiller costs an extra $22,000 a month.

That rental fee is the cost of waiting. At the August 14, 2025 board meeting, Trustee Heather Plotzke said offices were still in the 80s even with the air conditioning on and fans running, as the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. In the same coverage, Ruben Arras, the district's director of facilities, maintenance and operations, explained the risk:

"We lost one chiller and we don't want to lose the second chiller. It would be chaos at both campuses if both chillers went down."

What This Summer Built

Phase 1 replaced the pipe. The district's list of needed work included swapping the leaking underground chilled-water lines for above-ground piping. It also called for a new chiller plant, a new boiler plant, removal of an old thermal energy storage system that no longer works, and packaged rooftop units for 80% of Bernardo Heights.

At the August 6, 2026 board meeting, Associate Superintendent Eric Dill reported that Phase 1 piping at Rancho Bernardo High and Bernardo Heights was finished, with more than 15,000 feet of pipe installed. At the same meeting, the board approved a preconstruction contract for Phase 2.

The order of work makes sense. Leaking underground pipe was one of the reasons the old system couldn't cool the buildings. New chillers feeding the old pipe would have pushed cold water into the same leaks. Now the distribution system is ready, and the plant at its center is still the one from 1988.

Phase 2 Is the Plant Itself

Poway Unified posted the Phase II solicitation, RFP 2027-03, on June 3, 2026, with proposals due July 13. It covers replacing the central chiller plant serving Bernardo Heights Middle School and Rancho Bernardo High School, including preconstruction and construction services, at an estimated value of $17 million.

At the board's September 24 facilities workshop, staff reported that Phase 2 had been awarded to Flint and was in preconstruction. The October 8 board agenda lists the award of RFP 2027-03 for Phase II to Flint Design Build, LLC, doing business as Flint. Families who want the formal vote and contract value can find them in the minutes for that meeting once they are posted.

The scale has grown with time. In 2025 the full replacement was estimated at roughly $28 million, and Plotzke noted that construction costs had risen over the previous several years. The Phase II solicitation alone now carries a $17 million estimate.

Why It Arrives in Pieces

When trustees voted to move ahead in August 2025, Dill told them the district didn't have enough money on hand to bid the whole project, so it would fund about $22 million first and look for the rest. The sources he named in 2025 have different levels of certainty:

A facilities bond put to voters, which could have covered the gap, is off the table for now. In September 2025, trustees began weighing a facilities bond of roughly $400 million to $600 million for the November 3, 2026 general election. The Union-Tribune's coverage of that workshop listed the Rancho Bernardo High and Bernardo Heights HVAC replacement among the district's larger needs.

Then, in spring 2026, Poway Unified published "A Deliberate Pause." It said the district had decided not to pursue a bond measure at this time. The district wrote that health and safety upgrades, especially HVAC, roofing and modern classrooms, resonated strongly with the community. It also cited high sensitivity to tax rates and cost-of-living pressure, and concluded that support was not yet strong enough to give confidence of reaching the 55% approval a California school bond needs. The district also looked at a smaller measure and passed on it because a reduced funding model "risked producing partial solutions."

That leaves a chiller plant being bought in stages from maintenance budgets, developer fees and state programs. At the September 24 workshop, staff explained that state programs require local matching funds, 50/50 for new construction and 60/40 for modernization, and that state program rules change over time.

Del Sur Shows What a Failed System Costs

A few miles west, Del Sur Elementary shows what happens when cooling and humidity problems go past the point of repair. Mold was found there in July 2026. The school's 840 students started the year about 3 miles away at Stone Ranch Elementary in 4S Ranch, which already had about 550 of its own students and needed portable classrooms to fit everyone. As of September 10, remediation had cost $1.47 million at Del Sur and $326,000 at Black Mountain Middle in Rancho Peñasquitos, with more costs to come.

At first the plan was to repair and tune the existing HVAC. In its October 19 community update, the district said an independent assessment had found microbial growth on chilled-water pipe insulation, water staining on insulation throughout the buildings, and high moisture in some mechanical closets. The district noted that the assessment found no evidence of the mold commonly called "black mold." Staff now recommend a new HVAC system and say that replacing the insulation alone would not fix the recurring moisture. The reopening target moved from January to July 9, 2027.

Del Sur's emergency response used the district's emergency contracting authority, which allows contracts without competitive bidding. The Rancho Bernardo plant is moving through a competitive solicitation and preconstruction. That slower route depends on the remaining chiller holding on until the new plant is built.

The Next Dates to Watch

The planning calendar for the rest of the district's facilities work runs well into 2027. At the September 24 workshop, staff put total districtwide facilities needs above $1.9 billion. They also previewed a public dashboard that sorts projects into priority bands of 1–2 years, 3–5 years, 7–10 years and beyond 10 years. Trustees asked for a clear, prioritized project list with the reasoning behind it.

• Tuesday, November 3, 2026: General election. Poway Unified decided not to pursue a facilities bond this cycle.
• Thursday, November 5, 2026, 6 p.m.: Regular board meeting in the Community Room of the District Office at 15250 Avenue of Science in Rancho Bernardo. Staff will present the Del Sur findings and request authorization to design and install a new HVAC system there.
• January 2027: Updated site plans and Facilities Master Plan materials are expected back alongside a demographer presentation.
• July 9, 2027: The Del Sur reopening target, which depends on approvals, equipment delivery, construction and environmental clearance.

For Rancho Bernardo High and Bernardo Heights families, the November 5 meeting is the place to ask for a construction schedule for the Flint contract and an update on whether the state School Building Program applications were filed. Those two answers will show whether the new pipe under the campuses gets a new plant on time.

If you own a home near Rancho Bernardo High or Bernardo Heights and want to know how the local market is pricing homes right now, the Jim Bottrell Team can give you a clear, data-based answer. Start with a free home valuation, and learn more about the area on our Rancho Bernardo neighborhood page.