Feng Shui Report Recommendations

The Wake County Public School System is already pursuing six of the seven recommendations included in an Oct. 24 report on the upcoming building program.

1. Use renovation projects as opportunities to simultaneously add seats and address health and safety concerns.

Not only would the renovations in the upcoming bond allow the Wake County Public School System to add classroom seats and make existing ones healthy – in essence, keeping them usable – it could boost academic achievement.

The main purpose of the renovation projects is to correct critical heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) system deficiencies in the schools and to ensure that they are safe, healthy, quality places for students to learn. The 13 major renovation projects included in the bond will also result in a gain of almost 2,100 classroom seats.

Most of the renovations are tied to indoor air quality issues. The list has been trimmed down from 40-plus projects based on the highest health and safety concerns. The buildings slated for major renovations are 30-50 years old and haven’t had a major renovation. Renovations are being undertaken so the facilities can serve another 40 years.

Replacing poor HVAC systems decreases maintenance needs, increases the quality of life for students and staff, and improves achievement. A research report released in October 2006 found that “air quality and temperatures in classrooms are important factors in the learning process and improving them should be given as much priority as improving teaching materials and methods” (Effects of HVAC on Student Performance, American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc., www.ashrae.org, 2006.).

Figure 1 should show that 12 (as opposed to only nine) of the 13 renovation projects have life-cycle impact since they will be replacing all of the life-cycle items such as HVAC, paint, carpet, cabinetry, etc. (At Cary High, only an addition is being done.)

2. Commit to use every school construction alternative available.

WCPSS is already pursuing nine of the 10 school construction alternatives recommended:

Charter schools – The Board of Education passed a resolution encouraging the North Carolina General Assembly to study the programs in the state’s charter schools and to determine if their financial and academic performance should warrant incrementally increasing the charter school cap in North Carolina state law.

However, Wake charters grew by an average of fewer than 300 new Wake students the past three years. At this rate, it would take approximately four years to add enough charter schools to equal one WCPSS year-round elementary school. Under the state laws that govern charter schools, those schools have the ability to petition the state to increase the number of students they serve.
Adaptive re-use – WCPSS opened Lufkin Road Middle in the American Sterilizer Co. Plant in 1998 and River Oaks Middle in the Hedingham Office Complex in 2005, and will open Wakefield’s ninth-grade center in an old Winn Dixie in 2007 and Laurel Park Elementary school in the Bespak Industrial facility in 2008.
Modular schools – WCPSS opened three modular campuses in 2005 enabling the district to open those campuses one and two years earlier than scheduled.
Ninth-grade centers – WCPSS opened two ninth-grade centers in 2004 and is scheduled to open another five centers in 2007 and 2008.
Joint use agreements – WCPSS contacts each municipality prior to any land purchase to evaluate their interest in a partnership. There are 82 campuses with joint use agreements where other partners have contributed dollars for improvements or contributed toward or performed maintenance. Of those, contributions were made toward land acquisition on 25 campuses and six campuses have jointly used buildings.
Public-private partnerships – WCPSS will issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) in early 2007. (The legislature just passed this law in July 2006.) WCPSS has already contacted districts in Virginia and South Carolina along with Charlotte to explore their methods and best practices. The report’s author said that current school assignment policy must be modified. However, for the new elementary school to open in the Cary Park area in 2008 (if the bond passes), the developer is providing $5.5 million and WCPSS is allocating 200 seats for neighboring students.
Year-round schools of choice – WPCSS has 15 years of experience operating year-round schools. There are currently 20 year-round schools in session.
Learn and Earn/Early College sites – WCPSS opened the Wake Early College of Health and Sciences in 2006, through a partnership with Wake Technical Community College and WakeMed Health & Hospitals.
Satellite campuses – WCPSS welcomes the opportunity to form partnerships with area businesses. However, it’s too early to know whether this idea will provide a significant number of new seats. The seats are needed now.
Virtual schools – WCPSS high school students have had access to virtual schools for many years, Cumberland County’s Web Academy is one example. And now, N.C. DPI is providing virtual school resources for all high school students across the state.

Also, each WCPSS high school offers a web-based program, NovaNET, to provide individualized instruction to students during the summer.

Table 5 lists alternative facility solutions.

Seven charter schools were assumed to open before 2013 and provide 2,500 seats. That is only 5 percent of the expected student increase in that time period.
Public-private partnerships show a savings of $118 million, but that money is only saved if the lease payments are less than the debt payments one would have paid as owner. It is not known if any money would be saved. Each potential partnership will require an extensive cost/benefit analysis to determine if the transaction will be in the best interest of the taxpayers.
The report misidentified $47 million in savings from using pay-as-you go funds instead of financing school construction with general obligation bonds. Over half of the funds identified for a new pay-as-you go fund are not new funds, and won't be realized, because they are currently included in the proposed funding stream for the 2006 Capital Improvement Program. These include lottery revenue, transfer-in Ad Valorem Tax, and other sources of education capital funds (state public school building capital fund).

Of the remaining funds proposed for pay-as-you go, the hotel/restaurant tax are set by state statute and school construction is not an allowable use. Any change would require legislative approval. The remaining funds identified as new pay-as-you go funds (community use of schools, regional center funding, Exploris, fire arms center, animal care and adoption center) are already committed; this is a policy decision as to whether these funds should be redirected and only represent 1 percent of the total school building program needs.
Adaptive re-use shows a gain of 2,000 seats with a cost and savings of N/A. While adaptive re-use saves time and allows WCPSS to take advantage of available resources, WCPSS experience has shown the cost of renovating existing spaces for schools costs approximately the same as constructing new. Sometimes, adaptive re-use is the only viable option to obtain property in a particular area.
The October 2005 version of the 2005-06 Annual School Campus Capacity report shows that there were 2,095 more students than there were seats instead of the 3,938 additional seats shown in the table. Therefore, no savings would be realized.
Year-round conversions were omitted from the table. For 2007-08, 19 elementary schools will be converted with a gain of approximately 2,700 seats and a savings of approximately $55 million in capital cost.

3. Create a pay-as-you-go fund that will decrease the interest paid on debt like bonds or certificates of participation and increase funds available for school facilities.

WCPSS doesn’t finance school construction, Wake County government does. The county’s overall capital plan is funded by an 80 percent debt and 20 percent cash ratio. The upcoming school bond isn’t 80/20 because the county is using more of its cash for non-school projects.

4. Use efficient school designs that assign between 70 and 75 percent of total building space for educational and programmatic activities.

The program areas are counted differently by different groups. For example, WCPSS and the Department of Public Instruction classify toilets and custodial areas as non-assignable, while the American Institute of Architects (AIA) considers them assignable. The fact that Houston uses less than 30 percent for non-assignable space is not relevant to what WCPSS does unless it is explained what Houston counts and how they design their schools.

It was stated that the cost per student for new schools in the upcoming capital program was much higher than would be expected when compared to the regional cost in the February 2006 School Planning and Construction Magazine report. When adjusted for an apples to apples comparison, WCPSS is actually 9 percent less than the School Planning Report cost for elementary schools, 11 percent less for middle schools, and is approximately 8 percent more for high schools.

In addition, using data that was compiled by the John Locke Foundation for cost per square foot of construction for comparable nationwide school districts, WCPSS is from 0 to 5 percent above the median cost for elementary and high schools bid between 2003 and 2005 and from 2 to 14 percent below the comparable average cost per square foot.

Based on data from the Department of Public Instruction’s website dated 3/17/06 of new schools bid across the state as reported by bid year, WCPSS bid day building costs for new schools have been below the DPI average cost per square foot for every year from 2001 to 2005.

WCPSS re-uses school building designs (prototypes) to reduce the cost of design. Re-using designs typically saves between $150,000 and $400,000 depending on school size, and allows for minor design improvements and modifications on each re-use. The school system has employed this cost-saving strategy for many years. In fact, all 11 of the new schools in the current building program, PLAN 2004, are prototype designs.

5. Integrate wireless technology into school designs.

WCPSS included wiring new schools for wireless technology in the design specifications for the new building program. Several existing schools (Centennial Middle, Carroll Middle and Garner High) are already using wireless laptop carts.

Although wireless technology is becoming easier to use and more affordable, laptops still cost approximately one-third more than desktop computers do.

6. Build larger schools on less land and find alternate uses for surplus land.

In an attempt to keep costs down, the Board of Education decided in March/April 2006 to build larger schools to serve more students at a lower cost per student while maintaining current acreage standards. The number of elementary school classrooms increased from 40 to 50; middle school classrooms increased from 60 to 82; and high school classrooms increased from 83 to 111.

By opening on the year-round schedule and increasing the number of classrooms, new elementary school capacity will increase from 655 to 1,124, larger middle schools on the year-round calendar will increase from 981 to 1,623, and traditional high school capacity will increase from 1,663 to 2,223 students.

Figure 2 comparing the median acreage and median footprint of the high schools by decade included acreage that was purchased for joint use with a municipality. For example, at Middle Creek High, the land total includes acreage for the Cary Community Center and a future library. At Knightdale High, it includes land for a Knightdale ball field complex. At Holly Springs High, the acreage included land for an elementary, middle, and high school. In the upcoming bond, the acreage for a large high school is anticipated to be 65 acres while the size of the footprint according to the author’s definition is 7.66 acres. Therefore the ratio of these two is much better than the ratio that the author suggested as being acceptable (60 acres for land and 5.6 acres for the footprint).

WCPSS has approximately 65 multi-story schools, with over 20 of those at the elementary school level. Of the 28 schools opening from 2002 through 2007, 24 are multi-story.

In August 2006, WCPSS declared two pieces of property surplus and ready to sell, per Board Policy 7250. One is approximately five acres of land at the southern end of the East Cary Middle School property and the other is approximately two-and-a-half acres in downtown Zebulon. Several others are anticipated to be declared surplus in the near future.

7. Work to establish more flexible zoning and environmental regulations for schools.

Zoning and environmental regulations are determined by the state, county or municipality, depending on where the land is located. For years, WCPSS has been trying to seek standardized rules and requirements for permitting, inspections, etc. The school district would welcome a broad-based effort to adjust them for schools.