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Renovate or rebuild?
(by Mitch Schneider - November 24, 2009)
With a pair of improvement options now in front of them for Wydown Middle School, the Clayton School Board must decide between the two before possibly proceeding with a bond issue in April.
At its Nov. 18 meeting, the School Board heard from representatives of the district’s Wydown Tomorrow committee, a 16-member group charged with developing a plan for improving the middle school.
District officials have said that the school is in dire need of upgrades and is not conducive to a learning environment, assessments that are backed up by Wydown Tomorrow’s findings.
“There are no classrooms for foreign language, health and enrichment teachers, so they have to share rooms with other teachers,” said Kristin Redington, who serves as the Wydown Tomorrow co-chair with Stephen Nickelson. “There is insufficient space in the cafeteria, closets have become offices, and offices have become small classrooms.”
According to Wydown Tomorrow, some classes, such as those for choral and instrumental music, meet in the hallways on a routine basis, while students who need additional one-on-one support also are sometimes taught in hallways. Due to a lack of storage space, boxes are stacked in halls, and staff must take home and bring back supplies because of a lack of space in rooms.
The committee’s work also found that many of the core classrooms do not meet the Missouri School Improvement Program’s school facility guidelines and standards. The MSIP, which is involved in the reviewing and accrediting of schools in the state, has guidelines for student capacity per room and recommended area in square feet.
“Compared to the MSIP guidelines, the classrooms and support space are woefully short … and this site is tight for a school this size, but with a few tricks, I think we can make it work,” said Matt Wolfe of Bond Wolfe Architects, which helped Wydown Tomorrow create the development plans.
Following a series of meetings with school staff members and nearby residents, as well as tours of the middle school, Wydown Tomorrow concluded that the district has two options for the middle school: it could either keep part of the existing building and then add or renovate space to address needs; or it could build a completely new school.
The first option presented would keep the core of the building intact, while demolishing an existing theater, performing arts facilities and one row of parking on the west side of the building. Those elements would then be replaced with a new three-story classroom wing added on to the existing facility.
Following completion of the new west wing, an existing classroom structure and “tower” on the east side of the building would be eliminated and replaced with a new two-story arts wing.
Pursuing this option would cost $35.4 million and would be completed sometime in November 2013. According to Wydown Tomorrow and Bond Wolfe, this option would result in a 4 percent increase in green space at the building, but it would also result in the school’s fine arts programs being relocated for 29 months, and the auditorium being unusable for the same amount of time. The field and track would be off-line for 19 months and administrative offices would out of commission for 15 months.
Replacing it with a new facility would cost a bit more, approximately $38.3 million, although it would have the same construction timeline as the first plan. This option would result in a 19 percent increase in green space at the site, but would take the field and track off-line for 31 months and the gym and locker rooms unusable for 15 months.
Both situations meet the district’s stipulations, given to Wydown Tomorrow at the start of the planning process: that the school would remain in its current location; that the project would cost less than $40 million and be funded with existing revenue and a no-tax-rate-increase bond issue; and that it would maximize green space and incorporate sustainable, LEED-certified construction while providing adequate parking.
Regardless of which option is chosen, there are still some construction issues that must be examined in order to ensure the continuity of education, despite program relocations, unusable facilities and student safety concerns in a construction zone.
One way to address those concerns would be to relocate about 200 students to the Maryland School Building, which the district owns but has not used for some time. However, the facilities at the building are sized for younger children, and the relocation would require hiring duplicate staff. The Maryland School option would cost between $3 million and $3.5 million.
Another option would be to assemble a grouping of modular classrooms, with students attending classes in 18 trailers. Issues with this option, however, include finding enough space within city limits to hold that many trailers, and how to handle cafeteria, gym and theater space. This option would cost about $2 million.
Finally, the committee suggested that the district could rent the former CBC High School on Clayton Road from Washington University during construction. The site could accommodate all of the students and staff, but part of the building has been gutted, and it would cost $2.1 million to 2.9 million to renovate it.
The school district and university had considered swapping Wydown for the former CBC site earlier this year, leading to Wydown being removed from a $51 million bond issue that narrowly passed in April. Land-swap talks ended before the vote, however.
School board members said they will further discuss the middle school project at meetings in December and January. They are scheduled to meet on Dec. 16, as well as on Jan. 25, which is two days before they must submit paperwork for placing a bond issue on the April 2010 ballot.
Full information on each of the plans, as well as updates on Wydown Tomorrow’s progress, is available on the school district’s website: www.clayton.k12.mo.us.
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