COEUR d'ALENE - School officials in Coeur d'Alene are rejecting all the bids they received for construction projects planned at Borah and Bryan elementary schools.

The proposals were opened Tuesday and all three came in higher than the $7.7 million the district budgeted for the two-school project.

"Right now, we can't award the bid," said Wendell Wardell, the district's chief operating officer. "We're considering what our options are."

The schools are among five targeted for modernization projects being financed by a $32.7 million bond voters passed in August 2012.

The Borah and Bryan school remodels were wrapped into one project because they mirror each other, and the planners thought it would make the project more attractive to contractors, Wardell said.

"I think we created a situation where there were some interested bidders that the project was too big for," he said.

The lowest bid of $8.8 million came from T.W. Clark Construction of Spokane Valley.

Wardell said they are giving the construction company some time to "value engineer" the project, to go back to the subcontractors and review estimates for areas where costs can be saved.

"I appreciate that they are working to see if they can come in to our budget," Wardell said. "That's the only way that we'd be able to award this project."

If T.W. Clark can't complete the work at the two schools for the budgeted amount, Wardell said they will start the competitive bid process over again, separating out the schools as two, smaller, independent projects.

T.W. Clark is the contractor working on the district's Canfield Middle School project. That bid, awarded in May, came in at $2.4 million under the original project budget. If those funds still remain after the middle school work is completed, the excess money will be directed toward Winton Elementary, the district's oldest school. Winton may be rebuilt, at a higher cost, rather than remodeled.

Wardell said the situation with the Borah and Bryan bids doesn't change the plan for Winton. The leftover funds from Canfield won't be going toward the elementary school projects, he said.

"That's the deal we made with the community, that any excess would go to Winton," Wardell said.

The construction plan was to have fencing up around the construction areas at Borah and Bryan before school starts next month. Each of the schools is slated to have a gym addition added, work Wardell said they planned to complete during the fall and winter. After the end of school in June, the renovations inside each of the schools would be completed.

"If we have to re-bid it, we're going to be sliding that schedule a bit," Wardell said. "Still and all, the dollars have to fit right."