Board to Consider Options for Central HS Fiasco

State law does not permit the construction of schools in land designated for parks, except by permission of the voters. School and city officials, consulting engineers and architects all missed this issue for months while plans were being developed for the expansion of Central High School. Now the District apparently has four options:

• ask the Legislature to change the law to add schools to the list of facilities allowed in park land;
• ask the voters of Rapid City to approve the construction;
• redesign the planned renovation to build on the North side of the campus; or
• abandon the expansion altogether and redirect the investment to a new high school.

The Board of Education will meet Wednesday, November 19 at 4:30 p.m. to consider these and perhaps other options. For the moment, the District has asked the architects to stop work on the project until a decision is made. Already the District has invested $400,000 – $500,000 in the current plan. The money came from the District’s capital outlay budget, and not from the general fund which covers salaries and operations. Capital outlay money is used for building construction and repair, equipment and computer purchases as well as durable items like text books and even band uniforms.

Resolution of the land issue is already heating up with Friends of Rapid City Parks who organized several years ago to resist the continued loss of park land to construction projects. If the issue is brought to the voters in Rapid City, they are talking about opposing the measure. But avoiding the voters in Rapid City by going to the Legislature to seek a special change in the law could also be difficult. The Board is likely to consider these issues and more in its discussion.

Kayla Gahagan has tracked this issue since it became public last Friday in a series of stories in the Rapid City Journal:

• Wednesday, 11/18 – Central expansion plot both flood zone and park land
• Monday, 11/16 – Board faces tough choice with Central expansion options
• Saturday, 11/14 – Land oversight could derail Central High Project

The Board meeting will be held at 4:30 p.m. in the Council Chambers at the City/School Administration Center at 300 Sixth Street. The public discussion of Central may be delayed, however, as the Board will meet first in Executive Session to consider a student suspension and then hear a presentation from the District’s attorneys on the legal options related to the Central issue.

To read the Rapid City Journal’s editorial on the issue, click here: RCJ editorial.

Rising Enrollment Numbers on Board Agenda

As of September 30, 189 additional students were enrolled in the Rapid City Area Schools compared to September, 2008. This 1.4 percent increase is the largest in several years. Surprisingly, the increase was not fueled by the state’s new mandatory attendance law, which requires students to stay in school until they are 18 or graduate. Instead, increases at the elementary level pushed the numbers upward. Over the last four years, elementary school enrollment has risen more than 8 percent.

With the new enrollment figures the District is running well ahead of the projections provided by MGT of America in its June 2008 assessment of the District’s facilities needs. MGT estimated that elementary enrollment would not reach 6,222 until 2017. With 6,326 elementary students enrolled last month, the District has already exceeded that projection. According to Superintendent Peter Wharton, other districts around the state are also seeing increases in elementary enrollment. “Sioux Falls, for example, had a big increase in kindergarten this year.” This growth in enrollments makes efforts to deal with long-run facilities needs even more urgent for the Board and the Administration.

District Reaches Out

High school enrollments were up by 39 students in September compared to September 2008. Anticipating implementation of the state’s new mandatory attendance law, the District reached out this past summer to 16- and 17-year olds who had dropped out of high school. Under the auspices of Project U-Turn, district representatives knocked on the doors of nearly 300 families in Rapid City to  encourage students to come back to school voluntarily rather than be forced back into the classroom by the courts. “Many of the approximately 70 returning students are a product of those home visits,” says Katie Bray, assistant superintendent for student achievement.

The net increase of only 39 students at the high school level is far short of the 200-300 that some board members and administrators had predicted. The full impact of the mandatory attendance law, however, may not be felt for some time. According to Wharton, young people affected by the law are still filtering into the District. “Some walk in off the street. Some are referred by the courts. Others came from our recruiting efforts.” The District is working to ensure that all of these students who have come back to school get personal attention. “Each returning student,” says Bray, “is taken through a process and a personal learning plan is created.”

Board to Consider Joining Funding Fight

In addition to the presentation on enrollments, the Board will also vote on two options for joining the effort to seek a ruling from the courts that the Legislature is falling short of its constitutional mandate to provide sufficient funding for education. The first resolution proposes that the Rapid City Area Schools join the South Dakota Coalition of Schools, which represents 92 school districts in the state. The organization commissioned the 2005 “Adequacy Study” of school funding. This resolution proposes that the District make a $10,000 contribution to the Coalition to support its efforts “to ensure that the constitutional rights of the children within our district are being protected.”  The second resolution also proposes that the District join the Coalition and provides for paying annual dues of $600.

New Budget Format to be Presented

Business Manager Dave Janak will also be presenting the new template for the District’s budget. The new template was developed by consultant Jeff Partridge to make it easier for citizens and board members to understand the policy priorities implicit in the budget document. For more information on this plan, read Kayla Gahagan’s October 10, 2009 article in the Rapid City Journal.

The new enrollment figures and the Coalition resolutions will be discussed by the Board of Education at its regular meeting on Thursday, October 15. To accommodate the schedule for parent/teacher conferences, the meeting will start at 7:30 p.m. at the City/School Administration Center on Sixth Street. A copy of the full agenda is available on the District’s website. Enrollments at specific schools can be viewed here on the District’s enrollment report: Enrollment Report 9 29 09

Central High Renovations Approved by Board

By a 6-1 vote, the Board of Education approved the Administration’s recommendation to begin renovations at Central High School that will add 19 classrooms for a Ninth Grade Pod, 6 classrooms for a new Science Wing and upgrade existing athletic facilities to incorporate two new basketball courts, a weight room, a wrestling room and storage facilities. When the project goes out to bid, the District will include options to add additional classrooms. The Board agreed to revisit a possible “Phase Two” renovation program that could include funding for a new fine arts theater.

The vote represented broad agreement among board members and community representatives that work on Central, the top priority in the 2008 MGT Consulting report, needs to move forward. But it did not resolve the issue of how big Central should become in terms of physical space and student population. Board members Doug Kinniburgh and Sheryl Kirkeby expressed concern that the Phase One plan does not fully address the District’s need for space for high school students. “We are over capacity now at Stevens, as well as Central,” Kinniburgh told the Board.

Board member Suzan Nolan said she believes the solution to the District’s high school capacity problems is not to make Central larger. “To draw down the numbers at Central,” she said, ” we need to create a technical and career high school for students from Jefferson and Lincoln at Dakota.”

Leah Lutheran was the sole board member to vote against the proposal. “I still have heartburn with the idea of decreasing the size of the high school,” she said. Reflecting on the proposal to turn Dakota Middle School into an alternative third high school, she said: “I want us to go forward, but is Dakota a suitable facility?”

Dan Lewis and Steve Malone, long-time advocates of the renovation, were disappointed that the Administration’s recommendation did not include plans to build three, rather than two, new gyms. They had hoped to give Central a total of five practice gyms. Board President Wes Storm pointed out that no high school or college in South Dakota had more than four gyms. Malone and Lewis asked the Board to include the third new gym as an option in the bid documents so that the Board and the community could know what it would cost. “If we know the price,”  Malone said, “maybe we can get some people from the community to put some money in.”

Bruce Knowles, the orchestra teacher at Central, urged the Board to continue to look at plans to add performance, rehearsal and storage space for the fine arts at Central. “Even if you cap Central’s enrollment at 1800,” he said, “we would still have inadequate lighting for rehearsal and instruction. We would still need space for storage, and we would still have a security issue in the event of a lockdown.”

The Board has agreed to discuss the idea of building a new theater and adding rehearsal space and storage facilities at Central as part of a Phase Two renovation program. Estimates for this project range from $7-10 million dollars depending on the final specifications for the project.

The challenge for the Board, as Business Manager Dave Janak explained, is that the District’s budget for new facilities is limited to about $87 million over the next ten years.  ”If you want to build a $47 million high school at Central, you can,” he said, “but you will shortchange something else down the line.”

Board to Vote on Central Renovation Tonight

If you attend only one school board meeting a year, tonight may be the night to attend, especially if you are concerned about the future of Central High School and other building projects on the horizon. The Board’s Facilities Committee is recommending that the District move ahead with the construction of a Ninth Grade Pod with 19 classrooms, a new Science Wing with 8 classrooms and improvements to the PE and Athletic Areas that will give the school a total of 5 baskeball courts, new weight and wrestling rooms, and storage areas. The plan is based on the idea that the District will move more students into a phased third high school program at Dakota and seek to limit Central’s population to roughly 1800 students. If approved, construction could begin in 2010.

Tonight’s decision has been in the works for a number of years. Overcrowding issues and deficiencies in the original facilities at Central have prompted complaints from students, parents, teachers, athletic programs and advocates for the performing arts. In the spring of 2008, the consultants offered four options for alleviating the overcrowding at Central and meeting the long-term needs of high school students in Rapid City. They included:

1. Current enrollment boundaries model – add capacity to Central ($43.7m) so that it can handle 2400 students, address facilities issues at Stevens ($25.8m) but keep current attendance boundaries the same – total price: $69.5 million.
2. Balanced enrollment model – address facilities issues at Central ($28.8m) and Stevens ($37.0m) and redraw boundaries to alleviate overcrowding by sending more students to Stevens – total price: $65.8 million.
3. Third high school model – address facilities issues at Central ($27.0m) and Stevens ($25.8m) without increasing capacity at either school and begin the phased development of a third high school for 1,300 students ($35.3m) – total price: $88.1 million.
4. Tech High School Model – address facilities issues at Central ($27.0m) and Stevens ($25.8m) without increasing capacity at either school and build a new magnet technology high school with a capacity of 500 students ($15.0m) – total price: $67.7 million.

Over the last 15 months the Facilities Committee has focused primarily on Option 1 (2400 students at Central) and a hybrid of Option 4 (creating a phased third high school at Dakota). Preliminary concept drawings for Option 1 were presented to the public last spring. Bids for the work came in at nearly $42 milion. Some board members and their constituents expressed concerns regarding both the price tag and the plan to increase the student population at Central.  The $42 million price tag also became a concern when the Administration distributed its 10-year capital outlay projections showing that the District can only afford about $87 million for new construction over the next ten years given the current spending philosophy of the Board. Spending $42 million on Central would effectively delay all other new construction projects for five years.

The plan provided for the Board’s meeting tonight blends a number of aspects of the consultants’ recommendations. It would cap target enrollment at Central at 1,800 students. To meet this target student population, the District would redraw attendance boundaries to channel a limited number of students to Stevens (mostly Black Hawk students), move forward on planning for the construction of a new middle school in the Valley and transition Dakota from its current function as a middle school to become an alternative third high school for approximately 650 students.

Board to Consider Joining School Funding Lawsuit

Sioux Falls Attorney Scott Abdallah will provide the Board of Education with an update on the status of the school funding lawsuit at tonight’s meeting. Brought by students and parents from several districts, including Rapid City, the suit seeks a court ruling that the Legislature has failed its constitutional duty to provide sufficient for education in South Dakota. Following a trial last fall, Judge Lori Wilbur ruled against the plaintiffs, but the plaintiffs have appealed their case to the South Dakota Supreme Court.

The State sought to block school districts from providing financial support for the case. In July, however, the South Dakota Supreme Court overruled Judge Wilbur’s decision on this particular issue. Abdallah is expected to ask the Board of Education of the Rapid City Area Schools to join with the more than 90 other districts who are supporting the plaintiffs.

The Board meeting starts at 5:30 p.m. at the City/School Administration Center at 300 Sixth Street. A copy of the agenda is here: Board Agenda 9309. Read Kayla Gahagan’s preview of the meeting in today’s Rapid City Journal.

Board Moves Closer to Decisions on Central High, Dakota’s Future and New Valley Middle School

Board President Wes Storm presided over a sometimes tense discussion of the future of Central High School.

At a board of education study session this morning administrators from the Rapid City Area Schools presented an $87 million ten-year facility plan that would reduce the cost of renovating Central High School, budget for the construction of a new middle school in Rapid Valley, allow for the consolidation of alternative high school programs at Dakota and provide for the erection of a new middle school and elementary school on the site of South Middle School. Board members agreed in principle to the administration’s plan, but they were deeply divided over the scope and scale of the Central High School renovation project. Despite these divisions, the board was unanimous in its desire to get started at Central and agreed to bring the proposal to a vote at its next regular meeting scheduled for September 3.

The $87 million plan reflects many of the priorities articulated in the facilities study commissioned by the board in 2007 and delivered in the spring of 2008. That report, prepared by MGT of America, identified $203 million in facilities needs and building improvements in the Rapid City Area Schools based on an analysis of the condition of current buildings, demographic trends and changes in teaching strategies. As consultant Dr. Ed Humble told the board today, “No district gets to fulfill its entire wish list.” The spending plan presented today reflects the administration’s best efforts to balance competing demands for capital dollars and with expected capital tax revenues. In addition, the district plans to spend roughly $50 million dollars during this ten year period on the maintenance and upkeep of existing facilities.

New Middle School in Rapid Valley, Alternative High School at Dakota

The board began the meeting by looking at middle schools. Mike Kenton, director of Support Services, presented an analysis of projected changes in enrollment at the district’s middle schools. He noted that if attendance boundaries are not changed and demographic patterns remain the same, enrollments will continue to grow at Dakota and North Middle Schools over the next six years while enrollments at South, Southwest, and West will decline. These imbalances would lead to inefficient staffing and diminish the quality of education in the overcrowded schools. The administration evaluated MGT’s proposal to consolidate the existing five middle schools into four, but found that the District would not save significant money with the closure of a middle school. Instead, the administration is recommending the construction of a new middle school at the site of Valley View Elementary and redrawing boundaries to diminish the need for busing.

With the construction of a new middle school in Rapid Valley, the administration wants to renovate Dakota and consolidate its various alternative high school programs on the historic downtown campus. With more space, the alternative high school program could accommodate an estimated 645 students at the Dakota campus. Many of these students are either currently enrolled in the academy programs or on the waiting list to enroll.

Central’s Future Divides the Board

The board was mostly deeply divided when it came to a discussion of the proposed renovation of Central High School. Plans presented this spring outlined a $42 million project that would add a new Ninth Grade wing, science classrooms for grades 10-12, new gyms, a weight room, new lockers, a new theater for performing arts and a new main entrance to the school. Advocates for various sports programs and the fine arts have been pushing for these improvements for years. New state requirements for science education make the science classrooms a necessity. Meanwhile, the addition of a new Ninth Grade wing is intended to address a serious problem at Central — the high rate of failure and drop-outs during the first year of high school.

Community reaction to the cost of the Central renovation and the plan to expand the school to accommodate up to 2,400 students has been mixed. The Parent Advisory Committee of Indian Education presented a letter at the board meeting today stating that it did “not believe that expanding Central High School would be in the best interest of our students.” The group noted the already high drop out rate from Central and suggested that a third high school with smaller class sizes and more teacher support would improve student achievement.

Several members of the board have also expressed concerns about the cost of the Central project. They point out that the $42 million price tag will consume nearly half of the roughly $87 million the district can afford to spend on new building projects over the next ten years and could jeopardize or postpone the construction of the middle school in the Valley, the renovation of Dakota or the construction of new facilities to replace the aging and inefficient buildings at South Middle School and Robbinsdale Elementary. They asked the district’s design team to present another option for Central that was more tightly focused on academic needs with a budget closer to $28 million. 

The $28 million option presented by the administration today reduces the size of the Ninth Grade wing from 23 classrooms to 18. It reduces the new Science Wing from ten classroom/labs to eight. The big savings, however, come from reducing the planned expenditures for sports and fine arts. A planned competition gym would be replaced by a practice gym. The size of the new weight room would be reduced by 23 percent. New lockers would be reduced from 1100 to 900. Most important in terms of the overall cost of the project, $6.6 million would be saved by remodeling the existing performing arts theater and adding rehearsal space rather than constructing a new theater.

As the end of the meeting approached, Board President Wes Storm tried to identify areas of agreement and find room for compromise. There seemed to be some consensus around the idea that compromise could be reached on the size of the Ninth Grade wing, the number of new science classrooms, and the number of new practice gyms. The board agreed that a final discussion on the plan to add a new theater could be postponed until later this fall. In the meantime, Storm asked the administration to provide a recommendation to the board based on the study session conversation for a vote at the board’s upcoming September 3 meeting. Administrators are hopeful that the vote will provide a greenlight for final design, construction bids and groundbreaking at Central later this fall.

For more details on the study session, read Kayla Gahagan’s story in the Rapid City Journal.

Will Board Study Session Move District Forward?

With major facilities issues on the front burner, the Rapid City Board of Education will meet Saturday morning, August 22 at General Beadle Elementary to talk about the future of Central High School, the possible construction of a new middle school in Rapid Valley and a plan to convert Dakota Middle School to a special use high school. The board will also talk about changing school attendance boundaries in an effort to get more efficient use of the district’s existing facilities.

The conversation tomorrow has been billed as a “Ten Year Comprehensive Facilities Plan Discussion.” More than a year after releasing a consultant’s report describing the condition and suitability of all of the district’s schools, the district has yet to release a timetable or a spending plan for the projects delineated in the report. According to board members and administrators, Business Manager Dave Janak will present an analysis of the district’s capital financing capability at the meeting tomorrow. With an overview of what the district can afford, the board can begin to establish some priorities.

In the meantime, despite the lack of a five- or ten-year budget, the district has moved forward with plans to renovate Central High School for an estimated $42 million. Many community members have expressed concerns about the price of the renovation, particularly if it leads to an even larger student population at Central. Advocates for a third high school would like to see a more modest plan for renovation coupled with a strategy for reducing the overall population at the district’s two main high schools. Some board members are likely to press for reducing the scope of the project at tomorrow’s meeting.

The board is also scheduled to discuss its goals and priorities for the 2009 – 2010 academic year. For the past several years, the board’s main goals have been tied to student achievement as measured by scores on the Dakota STEP test. Year after year, however, the district has failed to achieve the board’s goals, leaving some to wonder how meaningful the goal-setting process really is. In fact, it appears that the District’s goal setting has simply become a process for internalizing the State Department of Education’s expectations under No Child Left Behind. Many parents and community members may wonder whether there ought to be goals that reflect the concerns of the community as well.

The community is welcome to attend the board study session in the Multi-Purpose Room at General Beadle Elementary (10 Van Buren Street) from 8 a.m. to 12 noon. The agenda is available here: 08-22-09 Special Meeting agenda.

Board To Discuss $42 Million Proposal for Central

Preliminary cost estimates for the proposed renovation of Central High School were provided to members of the Board of Education’s Building Committee this week. As reported by the Rapid City Journal, the total cost of the project could go as high as $42 million — a 61 percent increase over the estimates provided by Superintendent Peter Wharton a year ago.

The numbers given to the Building Committee are preliminary, however, and represent conservative estimates based on undertaking all of the changes envisioned in the current architectural plans. Some board members have expressed a desire to see the project slimmed down and have requested budget estimates for alternative approaches to the renovation and for the construction of a 1400-student third high school. Last summer, the Rapid City Journal reported that District officials asserted that the construction of a third high school could cost between $67.7 and $88.1 million.

The Board will hold a special study session to consider the Central renovation project and the issue of high school facilities sometime later this summer. A date for the open study session will be set at the Board’s Annual Meeting scheduled for July 16 at 5:30 p.m. At that meeting, Area 1 representative Arnie Laubach will complete his term. Newly elected member Suzan Nolan will be sworn in to take Laubach’s seat on the Board. Nolan has expressed concern that the public has not had adequate opportunity to comment on the proposed renovation at Central and the relative merits of the various parts of the project.

Board to Hear About Future of WDT Campus

A technical high school and a new city/county library are two of the ideas that are being talked about in the context of the development of a new Master Site Plan for Western Dakota Tech. Tonight, WDT President Craig Bailey will give an update on the development of the Master Site Plan (see image), talk about the school’s effort to conduct a “Green Audit” and provide the Board with an overview of WDT’s efforts to provide training assistance to workers laid off by the closing of SCI-Sanmina this year.

An architect's concept drawing for the WDT Master Plan envisions the construction of a new "Rushmore" building (orange) and a technical high school (dark blue).

The Western Dakota Tech Board of Education includes all of the members of the Rapid City Area Schools Board of Education as well as a number of ex-officio members from the community and the student body who provide advice to the RCAS School Board members.

The meeting begins at 5:30 p.m., Thursday, April 23, in Rooms A&B in the Mickelson Building on the WDT Campus.

For background on the continuing debate over the governance of the state’s Technical Institutes, see Barbara Soderlin’s recent article in the Rapid City Journal on April 20, 2009.

Attendance Boundary Discussion Could Send Students to Different Schools

Last year’s study of schools and facilities in Rapid City highlighted the fact that while some schools are overcrowded, others have surplus capacity. The consultants recommended that the District redraw school attendance boundaries to rebalance the distribution of students. For the first time since the report was released, the Board of Education will meet in a public study session on April 30 to consider this issue and the administration’s recommendations.

According to the report prepared by MGT and released last June, overcrowded schools (with high utilization rates on the chart above) included Canyon Lake, Corral Drive, and South Park Elementary schools, as well as Central High School. Schools nearing peak capacity included Grandview, Knollwood Heights, and Valley View Elementary schools, and Stevens High School. Schools with significant surplus capacity included Black Hawk, General Beadle, and South Canyon Elementary schools; along with North, Southwest, and West Middle schools. Given the surplus capacity in the middle schools, particularly, MGT recommended that the District close Dakota Middle School, and this recommendation is likely to figure in the Board’s discussion.

MGT’s calculation of the capacity of a given building took a number of factors into account including what teachers were trying to teach and to whom. They considered appropriate student-teacher ratios for specific grade levels. They factored in the size of the classrooms in a given building. They also looked at how scheduling (especially for middle and high schools) affects the demand for classrooms at certain times and for different purposes. They also understood that not every class will always have the maximum potential number of students. At the high schools, for example, required classes may have more demand than electives. They also accounted for the fact that some subject areas (science, for example) may demand more square feet per student than other courses (English or French, for example). 

Impact on Budgets and Quality of Education

Getting the right number of students in a given school is critical to both the quality of education and the efficient use of the District’s general fund and capital outlay dollars. When enrollment is too low, the relative cost of the staff tends to be higher. When enrollment is too high, systems and instruction start to break down and the quality of education may be compromised.

Still, moving students from one building to another can often be difficult. Read the rest of this entry »

Speakers Urge Board to Include Public in Facilities Planning

During Open Forum at the school board meeting last night, several people urged the Board and the media to do more to communicate with the public about the plans for Central High School and other changes proposed in the master plan for facilities. Representative Ed McGlaughlin (a former superintendent, mayor and current chair of the House Education Committee) asked the Board to reconsider its decision to move forward with the new design for Central to allow the public more time to understand the proposal. I asked the District, the Rapid City Journal and other members of the media to do more to help the public understand what was in the ten-year plan. Dr. Lindley asked the District to engage the public regarding plans to build a third high school — a technical high school — adjacent to Western Dakota Tech.

There are a number of simple steps that the District and the media could take to help inform the public. For example, although the Journal published a story on April 3 about the proposed renovation, it included only a sketch of the new courtyard entrance. It would be helpful if the paper would print a copy of the plan with an article or even just an exploded diagram explaining what’s on the plan — the ninth grade wing, the new theater, the new science classes, etc.

For its part, the District has posted several sketches showing how the new Central might look and a copy of the plan, but there is no accompanying text to explain to viewers what they are looking at. What are the components of the project? Why is each component being included? What’s the educational need? Etc. This doesn’t have to be long. A page of bullet points would be helpful. Read the rest of this entry »