Let’s Get Really Frugal on Rebuilding Our Schools

Previously I wrote that it may make sense to look at rebuilding Treasure Mountain Junior High on Kearns with 7th, 8th, and 9th grade at the facility. It was about 40% cheaper than what the school district seems to be contemplating. Yet, there may be an even cheaper alternative.

The core issue, according to our district, is that we need to have Pre-K and all day kindergarten in our elementary schools. It has been stated that there isn’t room for this. So, the district has gone down a path of realigning grades that has lead to a cascading effect that will likely cost over $50 million.

Yet, what if there was a cheaper alternative? What if we were to add on a few classrooms at each school? What would that cost? Let’s say we added 3 classrooms for Pre-K and kindergarten at each of the 4 elementary schools. That would be 12 total classrooms. If each class held 25 students (higher than it would likely be) and we used a standard square footage of 117 square feet per elementary student, with construction costs at $170 per square feet. That is a cost of about $6 million.

That is about 1/8 the cost of what is currently planned. It is likely even less because some schools like Jeremy Ranch already have the room. Perhaps you’d use Jeremy’s “3 classrooms” at Trailside instead. There are lots of options…

The important point is that there seem to be many strategies to achieve our goals, many of which cost much less money than $50 million.

If we only had an open mind…