The Little Rock School Board's unanimous vote last week to accept the results of a year-long facilities study from its consultants is the first step in what will be a lengthy process to upgrade the campuses in the state's largest school district.
School Board President Greg Adams said Friday that he anticipates district leaders quickly scheduling public forums about the facilities report to get responses from parents and others on the different proposals made by the consultants. Preliminary plans call for a forum to be held at each of the city's five public high schools.
"We want to use that feedback for setting priorities," Adams said last week.
A team of engineers, educational planners, architects and demographers led by the Fanning-Howey architecture and engineering firm of Indianapolis assessed each of the district's schools for their physical and educational adequacy, taking into account the projected school enrollment in different parts of the city for the next 10 years.
The cost to implement the consultants' recommendations would approach $500 million if all were carried out.
School Board members said Thursday night that in accepting the facilities report, they were not committing to carry out each recommendation as written, but rather to use the report's data and the recommendations as the basis for crafting the board's and district's own plan.
"We should embrace this," board member Norma Johnson said. "This is the big opportunity where something will happen across the board for everybody. There will be modifications. If there is something that we missed, then there will be an opportunity for someone to say, 'Hey, you missed this hole over here.' This isn't written in stone, so embrace it, invest in it and speak up if there are problems."
The facilities planning has already grabbed the attention of parent and community groups with interests across the district.
The consultants recommended the construction of a new McClellan High, now on Geyer Springs Road, on already purchased property on Richsmith Lane. The consultants further recommended that Cloverdale Middle School be relocated from its Hinkson Road site to the current McClellan site to make use of the McClellan gym and auditorium, which would be enhanced with a new classroom building.
The Cloverdale location has unstable soil, district officials and the consultants said, making the school's structural upkeep a challenge. Cloverdale Elementary School, next door to the middle school, was torn down years ago because of structural problems.
The consultants included in the recommendations a new middle school for northwest Little Rock. The district had already purchased property for a building to serve the growing northwest part of the city. Residents in that area have criticized the consultants and district leaders at public forums and on social media as being shortsighted in not planning for a new high school in addition to the middle school in northwest Little Rock.
Carl Baxmeyer, a principal in the Fanning-Howey firm, said in an interview that the planners looked at the overall capacity of the schools in the district and initially developed multiple scenarios for accommodating all the students, including high school students.
"There just isn't the need from a capacity standpoint for two new high schools," Baxmeyer said. "You would have to make them so small, there would be no economies of scale. There would be two gyms, two kitchens, two principals, two of everything."
As for recommending that a new high school be located in southwest Little Rock rather than in northwest Little Rock, Baxmeyer said that was a function of the board already owning land, a purchase that occurred before the employment of Superintendent Dexter Suggs.
"We worked with the reality that they had the land," he said.
The planners considered recommending that a new middle school be put on the Richsmith Lane site instead of a high school because the district needs more capacity at the middle school level.
"When you started looking at the dollars and cents of that, from our review, it was more cost-effective to build a new high school, and tear down parts of and re-purpose McClellan and move the Cloverdale program over there," Baxmeyer said.
Carver Elementary at 2100 E. Sixth St. and Rockefeller Elementary, 700 E. 17th St., should become prekindergarten centers for 3- and 4-year-old children, the consultants proposed. Carver's capacity is projected to fall below 50 percent over the next 10 years. Rockefeller is an "open-space" school that was trendy at one time and has makeshift walls separating the classes. Washington Elementary on South Main Street is undercapacity now, and its spare classrooms are used for district office space, making it a candidate to accept pupils from any re-purposed schools.
Board members Dianne Curry and C.E. McAdoo asked how vacant Cloverdale and Carver schools might be used.
Parents and faculty members from Carver in the audience were relieved to hear Suggs say he doesn't want to close Carver because it is a high-performing school. Ultimately it will be a board decision, Suggs said.
Baxmeyer said the Carver math and science specialty program could possibly be moved to Washington Elementary.
Parents from Carver at Thursday's meeting were anxious to preserve the school and its program.
"I was pleased to learn that this is not a final plan, and they are taking it under advisement and it wasn't a final decision," Michele Easter, a parent at Carver, said after the board meeting. "That was not communicated well before tonight. Now, we can have a lot more input into this going forward."
The facilities plan includes recommendations for repairs to schools over the long term, broken into four levels of priorities.
Priority 1 needs, totaling $26 million, should be done in a year or so, while Priority 2 needs -- totaling $48.5 million -- should be done shortly thereafter. Priority 3 needs, totaling $160 million, should be addressed within five years, and then $48 million in repairs and replacements is anticipated for the period after that. The priority needs include repairs and replacement of roofing, windows, foundations, ventilation systems, plumbing, and electrical systems.
The study addresses the needs that Little Rock district leaders identified as critical. Those include:
• Updating and adding air-conditioning for school kitchens -- $14.8 million.
• Creating physical activity space plus music and art rooms in the district's elementary schools -- $32.8 million.
• Expanding and improving athletic facilities, including the construction of an athletic complex for districtwide use -- $61 million.
Other items in the study include:
• Educationally adequate instructional features, including labs, air quality, acoustics and technology -- $17.5 million.
• Improved security features, including locking vestibules at school entrances -- $6 million.
At the high school level, the cost of anticipated improvements would range from $138 million to $149 million, including $81 million for a new McClellan High.
Improvements at the middle schools would range from $115 million to $118.7 million, including $22 million for addressing the needs at Cloverdale and $52.7 million for a new west Little Rock middle school.
Improvements at the elementary school level would range from $115.7 million to $128 million, including a $16 million replacement school for David O. Dodd Elementary.
Baxmeyer said Thursday that the consulting team will be happy to continue to advise district leaders on the data that have been collected as the district works through its planning process. School Board members also made plans to form a millage steering committee to advise them on facilities and related finances.
"Here's everything you need. It's half a billion dollars," Baxmeyer said about the study. "We recognize that the community can't do that right now. It has to be done in chunks, and what chunks are done and in which order, that's the next step.
"That's what the board of directors and the millage steering committee will have to decide. If they want us to provide some backup and talk about the data, we're more than happy to do that. It's up to the Little Rock district to decide, 'This is what we want to do,' and then take it to the voters."
Metro on 09/01/2014