Students will have to wait longer than expected to see the results of a pair of bond projects at Ballard Elementary School and Eastside Connections School.

On Monday, the Niles Community Schools Board of Education rejected bids for work on both remodeling projects after learning the proposals came in significantly over budget.

The Ballard project came in $850,000 over its $3.4 million budget, while the Eastside project came in $710,000 over its $3.5 million budget.

Supt. Dan Applegate said the board plans to make changes to each project and then send the projects out for companies to bid on this fall.

Both projects, which were originally expected to begin this summer, would not begin until the spring of 2017 and finish until the summer of 2018.

“Putting it out in the fall will give us a better opportunity. Labor won’t be as much of a premium then,” Applegate said. “We are still doing the same work that we promised. … We aren’t cutting out anything we said we were going to be able to do. We are just going to have to do it differently.”

Michael Kounelis, of the project management company Skillman Corp., attributed the bids coming back over budget to two things: an expensive labor market and putting the projects out for bid too late in the season. Kounelis said re-bidding the projects this September/October in addition to making minor changes to the projects’ scope would likely lower the price.

“We are hoping that it will help,” he said.

The projects at Ballard and Eastside are part of a $40 million project to improve school buildings throughout the entire school district. Voters approved the work by passing a pair of bond proposals during an election in the spring of 2015.

District officials said the work would be done in phases with Howard-Ellis Elementary, Ring Lardner Middle School, Ballard Elementary and Eastside Elementary as part of phase one.

Work on Howard-Ellis and Ring Lardner began last month. Bids for those projects came in slightly over budget, but not enough to impact the construction schedule.

Phase two work — Niles High, Oak Manor Sixth Grade Center, Northside School and Southside School — is expected to begin next spring.

Kounelis said delaying the Ballard and Eastside projects should not affect phase two work.

“It will intermesh with them,” he said.