Little Rock School District campuses need about $47 million in immediate improvements to keep students and employees safe, warm and dry, members of a facility-study team said at school forums Monday night.
Another $107 million in school building work should be done within two to five years, and $218 million in work is needed in the next five to 10 years, the planners said.
Members of an engineering, architecture and educational planning team, led by Fanning Howey Associates of Indianapolis, on Monday presented general summary information about building needs at six schools and will make similar one-hour presentations at the remaining district campuses through April 30.
The coming forums are set for Wednesday at Baseline, Wakefield, Geyer Springs and Meadowcliff elementary schools; Cloverdale Middle School; and McClellan High School. The full schedule is on the district’s website at lrsd.org.
The forums Monday night at Booker Magnet Elementary and Dunbar Magnet Middle schools left their audiences - mainly school employees and a few parents - agreeing that improvements are needed but wanting to know the specific problems and fixes identified by the evaluators for the individual campuses.
Booker Principal Cheryl Carson asked whether the energy-inefficient Plexiglas windows at her school would be on the list for immediate replacement.
“What is going to happen to this building?” said Kenneth Milton, an audience member at Dunbar. “I don’t know any more than when I came in.”
Troy Glover, a Fanning Howey educational planner and project manager for the Little Rock study, said there are “thousands of pages” of information compiled on each building. Information released at the forums regarding each school’s enrollment projections and its adequacy for supporting programs is intended to conform to the one-hour time frame for the forums.
Glover also said the recommendations aren’t fully prepared. The questions that planners pose to the forum audiences are intended to help develop recommendations. The questions and answers are measures of the public’s tolerance for approaches to improving facilities, Glover said.
The approaches could be redistributing students among schools, combining students from different schools on one campus as a way to close another campus, or building replacement schools.
Part of the millions of dollars in anticipated costs for improvements will have to prepare for the bubble of students who will move through the district’s middle and high schools, planners said.
The district’s middle school population is projected to be at 122 percent capacity in 10 years, and the high school enrollment will be at 104 percent capacity. The elementary schools are projected to be at a more comfortable 87.3 percent capacity. That is based on an allocation of 40 square feet per student and the elimination of portable classroom buildings.
“What does this tell us?” Fanning Howey architect John Davids said to the small group at the Dunbar forum. “At the elementary schools, we may need to consider reallocation of students” to equalize the populations among the schools. He acknowledged that those sorts of changes can trigger emotional and political responses.
The middle schools and high schools would be overcrowded. As a result, new middle school and high school campuses would be necessary, along with additions to existing schools.
The facility planners, who will recommend a master plan for building improvements to the Little Rock School Board in June, have been touring the schools since last year, checking the adequacy of the building structures and their suitability for teaching and learning.
Team members said Monday at Dunbar and Booker that only one of the district’s campuses - Don R. Roberts Elementary School - was in excellent condition.
Six schools - which were unnamed Monday night - are in “good” condition, 36 are in “fair” condition and one school was in “poor” condition. No schools were listed as being in “very good” condition.
“That’s decent for the age of the schools,” Davids said of the assessment. He credited the schools’ condition to strong custodial and maintenance service.
Carla Remenschneider, a Fanning Howey architect who led the session at Booker, said school evaluators saw positives in the district, including the widespread use of technology in the form of electronic white boards, the availability of media centers at each campus, adequate classroom furniture and good elementary playground equipment.
The negatives, she said, included lack of daylight in the classrooms, a lot of undersized classrooms in the district, and a lack of flexible space that would allow for large-group activities or small-group instruction. The undersized classrooms were concerns at Booker, a former junior high that was converted to an elementary school years ago.
Remenschneider said that Booker has about $36,400 in immediate needs, $423,800 in needs for the next two to five years and $1.7 million in needs to be addressed in the next five to 10 years. The $36,400 would be to repair leaks and other immediate system failures. The $1.7 million would be for remodeling class space.
Both Booker and Dunbar received a “2” rating for educational adequacy on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best.
Remenschneider said the ranking was an indication of Booker’s undersized classrooms, as well as the lack of natural lighting and poor acoustics.
Little Rock School District leaders have identified goals they want accomplished as a result of a master facilities plan. Those goals include a better learning environment for students and teachers, which includes natural light, fresh air ventilation, comfortable room temperatures and suitable acoustics. The plan also must address school safety, incorporate support for technology systems, eliminate portable classroom buildings, promote energy conservation and provide air conditioning in the kitchens in 26 of the buildings.
Planners also are supposed to take into account the district’s plans for converting the Geyer Springs and Forest Heights campuses into specialty schools and the district’s preliminary plans for building a new middle school and high school.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 04/15/2014