BISMARCK — The Arkansas Board of Education has designated the Bismarck School District as “fiscally distressed” because it is spending more than it takes in and is drawing down its reserves.
District Superintendent Susan Stewart-Harper said at least some of the district’s money problems come from the change orders required in constructing its $12 million high school that opened in 2010 and the unexpected costs of maintaining and operating the “green” facility that was designed to save water, energy and expenses while improving environmental quality.
The high school was built with some of the state-of-the art, high-tech features that meet standards established to promote sustainability and efficiency in operations while creating a better environment for learning.
“We’re very proud of our building,” Stewart-Harper told the state education board on May 14 when she appeared before the board in Little Rock to answer questions about the district’s financial problems. “With the new ‘green’ technology, there are so many things that are unexpected. Issues come up that you have never heard of and never dealt with before.”
This is far from what Bismarck school officials said they expected from the 875,000-square-foot high school that is not yet 2 years old. In June 2010, Stewart-Harper and Larry Newsom, principal of Bismarck High School, conducted a tour of the new school building before it was opened.
“There are energy-saving features all through the high school,” Newsom said at the time.
Asked if the Bismarck High School is a lemon for the school district, Stewart-Harper said no.
“I really don’t think it is,” she said. “It’s a great building, but there are so many costs associated with a green building that were not anticipated.”
When the school was first built, district officials were told that in similar green-technology schools built around the state, energy savings and lower maintenance costs would allow school systems to recover almost the total cost of the building in the first 12 years of operation.
“We’re not seeing that yet,” Stewart-Harper said this week.
Stewart-Harper reported to the state education board that the school’s waste-management system requires daily monitoring at a cost of $2,000 a month.
She also said the nontraditional, forced-air heating and air-conditioning system requires a level of maintenance that must be done by specialized workers instead of school-district maintenance employees.
Newsom explained in 2010that air moving over pipes in which water circulates would come into the classrooms about waist high or lower and that the air would only move up when it hits a student’s body. Stewart-Harper explained during the 2010 tour that as more students entered a room, causing the air temperature to rise, the cooling system would respond to the changes and adjust the temperature.
Stewart-Harper said the change orders totaled $331,000.
“The changes came from things such as correcting the subgrade for the entrance drive, constructing a handicap accessible sidewalk to the gym, additional electrical wiring, an audiovisual system for student performances, and relocation of the waste water treatment plant due to unstable soil,” she said in a statement.
The Bismarck School District was pressured to build a new high school by the state education board, Stewart-Harper said, because the school was designated in fiscal distress at the time.
“It was either pass a tax increase for a new school or close,” she said as the school was nearing completion. “Passing the 12-mill tax in 2007 was a huge thing for the community.”
The original budget for the school building was between $14 million and $15 million.
“It was less than anticipated,” Stewart-Harper said. “We watched our dollars and cents very closely.”
Since being in distressed status the first time, the Bismarck district had a so-called legal balance of $1.5 million for the 2008-2009 school year that the district was supposed to maintain, according to the state school board.
The legal balance is the year-end balance of funds held by the school district, excluding funds earmarked for specified expenses. By the end of the 2010-2011 school year, the balance had dropped 40 percent to around $900,000.
The district has also experienced other unexpected expenses. The members of the state school board said the cost of the system’s extracurricular student activities has tripled.
The superintendent said the expenses came from building new baseball and softball fields adjacent to the high school. The old fields were several miles away and caused expensive transportation problems and liability issues.
She said the new fields do not yet have restrooms or concessions, but those items will be coming in the years ahead.
Staff writer Wayne Bryan can be reached at (501) 244-4460 or wbryan@arkansasonline.com.
Tri-Lakes, Pages 131 on 05/27/2012