Pierce Co. school district with toilet shortage passes $137M bond on fifth try
After five attempts, a local school bond is passing.
As of Thursday afternoon, the Pierce County Elections Office says the Orting School Bond has 3,715 (64%) “yes” votes and 2,031 (35%) “no” votes. In order to pass in Washington state, a bond needs:
- A 60% supermajority
- A total turnout threshold equivalent to 40% of the last election. Kyle Haugh, the elections supervisor for the Pierce County Elections Office, told The News Tribune the bond needs 4,242 total votes in order to meet that turnout threshold.
There are currently 5,746 votes in total, with about 1,500 left to count across the county. The next round of results will drop at 4 p.m. on Monday, and results will be certified on Nov. 25.
Orting Elementary School and Orting High School currently share a 40-acre campus. If passed, the bond will build a new Orting Elementary School on 65 acres of land the district owns adjacent to the high school, allowing the high school to take over both current buildings. The bond will also build a new Career and Technical Education (CTE) wing for the high school, giving students about 20 seats in classes like welding and culinary studies.
This was the district’s fifth attempt to pass the bond since 2023.
The bond is $137 million, down from previous attempts to pass the bond. Ed Hatzenbeler, superintendent for the school district, previously told The News Tribune that they made the bond cheaper by cutting HVAC improvements, safety and security measures for other schools and a gym and cafeteria expansion at Ptarmigan Ridge Elementary School.
Voters in the school district – which covers 45 miles across Orting and areas near Puyallup, Graham, and Bonney Lake, including part of the master-planned Sunrise Community in South Hill – already pay $1.98 per $1,000 of assessed property value each year in levies. Levies go towards things that aren’t fully funded by the state such as extracurriculars and transportation.
This bond will add an extra $1.27 per $1,000, meaning taxpayers will pay $3.25 per $1,000 in property taxes to the district each year. A home worth $500,000 will require the owner to pay the district about $1,820 each year. If the bond failed, they’d pay $711 less.
“We are grateful to our community for recognizing the importance of investing in safe and modern learning environments for our students,” Brittany Piger, spokesperson for the school district, said in an email to The News Tribune. “These early results reflect a shared commitment to ensuring Orting schools can continue to grow and meet the needs of our students now and into the future.”
Hatzenbeler and Orting High School principal Matt Carlson previously spoke to The News Tribune in October about the overcrowding the schools are dealing with. Most of Orting High School was built in the 1980s, for 350 students – and now the population is more than double capacity at 900.
Elementary principal Connie Halvorson-Tran previously told The News Tribune that over half of the students are in portable classrooms each day. At Orting High School, the portables outweigh the regular classrooms 22 to 15.
The overcrowding has also led to brutal lunch and bathroom lines.
“We have 100 kids that eat lunch out of our cafeteria – in the hallway, or in picnic tables out front,” Matt Carlson, principal of Orting High School, told The News Tribune in October. “We have kids sitting on ramps and stairs eating lunch.”
Carlson also said the bathroom situation at the high school is so dire, he would have had to create a “port-a-potty city” by the portables to keep up with demand, if the bond didn’t pass.
Residents can view other Pierce County election updates on The News Tribune’s live results page.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include a statement from Brittany Piger, spokesperson for the Orting School District.
This story was originally published November 6, 2025 at 5:59 PM.
