Reducing the Cost of the School Building Program
April 11, 2006--In today’s Committee of the Whole, the Board of Education took straw votes on possible ways to reduce the cost of the school building program. The board potentially cut $1.4 million per new elementary school, $2.8 million per new middle school, and $4.4 million per new high school. The largest savings comes from eliminating stadiums from the high school model.
School board members also agreed to increase the overall capacity of the middle school model from 981 students to 1,281 students, with the goal of reducing the number of new middle schools WCPSS would need to build. The school board also agreed to increase the capacity of the high school model above the current 1,663 students, but did not decide how much to increase the capacity.
Staff will factor these tentative decisions into the draft capital improvement program they will present to the board on Thursday, where there will be additional discussion. Today’s straw votes are not final.
The board acknowledged that these reductions will impact teaching, learning and operations, but is working to reduce the amount of the November bond referendum to an amount palatable to the voters. The school board tentatively agreed to the following reductions in its models.
At the high school level:
- Delete high school stadium and provide track with lighted practice field
- Reduce non-assignable square footage (bathrooms, mechanical spaces) in the high school model
At the middle school level:
- Reduce size of all middle school science rooms from 1,200 to 1,100 square feet each
- Reduce all regular middle school classrooms by 100 square feet each to 850 square feet
- Reduce all non-assignable square footage (bathrooms, mechanical spaces) in the middle school model
- Reduce size of special needs and support classrooms by 100 square feet each
- Delete one practice field
At the elementary school level:
- Reduce non-assignable square footage (bathrooms, mechanical spaces) in the elementary school model
- Reduce the size of all regular kindergarten – fifth-grade classrooms by 50 square feet each
Staff pointed out that constructing single-story schools instead of multi-story ones would save approximately $265,000 per school at the elementary level and save $435,000 per school at the middle school level.
Chuck Dulaney, assistant superintendent for Growth and Planning, stressed that the final decisions will impact not only the next four or five years covered in the upcoming building program, but what the school system will be doing for the next 25 to 30 years.