Fitting a new Whisman school into the budget

Time is money for school districts looking to build new classrooms and upgrade infrastructure, as construction costs in the Bay Area are soaring toward levels rivaling those of the dot-com era. The Mountain View Whisman School District is seeking to develop plans post-haste to improve all eight of its schools, plus add a new one.

Two of the district’s committees met jointly Tuesday to discuss what it would cost the district to modernize and upgrade classrooms, construct new multi-use rooms and demolish aging “pod” classrooms at all the existing school campuses as well as at Whisman Elementary, which the school board indicated last month should be re-opened to serve students in the northeast quadrant of Mountain View.

After months of looking at different options to move, close or open schools throughout the district, opening a new neighborhood school in the Whisman and Slater neighborhood area is now the focus of the district staff, the Boundary Advisory Task Force and the District Facilities Committee.

And despite previous budget concerns, it looks like the district might be able to afford it, too. Opening Whisman and upgrading all nine campuses could cost the school district anywhere from $132.7 million to $164 million based on six cost scenarios, according to Todd Lee, Greystone West Program Manager.

The school district has about $148 million of the Measure G bond money remaining.

Costs are significantly lower than previous estimates because the district is now building for a capacity of about 450 students at most of the campuses, under to the assumption that Whisman would bring down student enrollment numbers at most of the district’s schools. Lower enrollment means fewer classrooms at each school and shrinking the multi-use rooms from 6,500 square feet to 5,800.

“This certainly tells you that there are scenarios that are within your shooting range,” Lee said.

The presentation could be seen as a shift in gears. Members of the school board and the boundary advisory task force expressed skepticism at previous meetings over the cost of opening a new school, arguing they haven’t seen the budget information they need to see if their big-picture decisions are actually plausible.

The price tag for each school, on average, would come down to somewhere between $14.5 million and $20 million, depending on whether the district opts to accommodate enrollment up to 600 at specific sites, upgrade the kitchens, increase the size of kindergarten classrooms or replace portables used for preschool, after-school care and YMCA services. Putting all these amenities at every schools would put the district $16 million over-budget, and Lee said there will have to be some picking and choosing to make it work.

There is an incentive to get work started soon, Lee said, as the cost of construction is escalating each year, and the dollar amount in the staff report is the closest guess they have for what it will cost to improve the schools three years from now.

“Our task is to take your $143 million and allocate it equitably amongst the projects and put them in the right order,” Lee said. “I don’t have a crystal ball, but based on doing this for 20 years, this is our best shot at it.”

Setting priorities

Monta Loma and Castro Elementary are expected to get the upgrades first, but for different reasons. The district plans to split Castro into two schools — one for the neighborhood school and one for the district’s Dual Immersion choice program — and needs to update the school’s infrastructure with a new administrative building and 13 newly constructed classrooms.

Monta Loma, on the other hand, was identified by architects as the school in the worst shape with its decaying 50-year-old buildings. Problems include “significant” dry rot and issues with the roofing, Lee said. Following Monta Loma and Castro, the district will likely start working on Bubb, Huff and Landels Elementary, with Stevenson and Theuerkauf to follow.

One committee member asked why Stevenson, a school almost entirely housed in portable buildings, is one of the last schools to be addressed. Lee said the portables in Stevenson are in relatively good shape, and that it would be more prudent to do the larger schools earlier on to save money on escalating costs.

The decision by the board last year to use funds from the Shoreline special tax district to pay for upgrades at the middle schools may be rescinded, which could mean the district has $143 million to spend on elementary schools, rather than $148 million.

In a note to both committees, Interim Superintendent Kevin Skelly said staff recommends that the board reconsider the decision last year to use about $5 million of the “Shoreline Funds” to pay for budget shortfalls on the middle school projects. The money comes from property tax revenue from the Shoreline Regional Park Community, a special tax district in the city, and could be used instead to fund three years of professional development and “turnaround funding” for the district’s lower-performing schools to implement Common Core standards, Skelly said.

“The district chose to spend money that could have paid for key programming needs of the district on construction. One could argue that voters gave the district a strong mandate to improve its facilities by using bond funds for this purpose,” Skelly wrote.

There are a few other issues that need to be addressed, including whether district staff can find ways to cut down on the operating costs for the new Whisman school, which could save the district as much as $600,000 annually. There’s also a desire to balance the number of socio-economically disadvantaged students at the schools, according to Skelly’s note, particularly in regard to Theuerkauf Elementary School. The percentage of students who are socio-economically disadvantaged in the Theuerkauf area is at 45 percent, but that number jumps to 69 percent for Theuerkauf’s enrolled students.

Solutions to that, according to Skelly, could be through balancing out enrollment in choice programs to better reflect the diversity of the city. The Stevenson school community has a stated goal to increase its socio-economically disadvantaged enrollment up to 20 percent from 13.4 percent.