An incensed reader wrote to me about a $108 million school bond approved in Provo late last year. She said, “How in the he** does Provo rebuild 5 schools for $100 million when we get 1 new school and an addition to the High School for $50 million. Are we paying Park City prices for our schools too?”

It does seem interesting. The Provo School District is rebuilding Provo High (about 1650 student) and four elementary schools as part of the project. The high school has 4 wings and they are tearing down and rebuilding one at a time. Each of the elementary schools are being completely torn down and rebuilt.

What’s equally as interesting is why they are rebuilding their schools. It appears most of these schools are 50-60 years old. In the case of Provost Elementary, “an employee goes to work an hour and a half early every Monday morning to turn on the water so it’s not brown when the kids arrive.” In Park City’s case, Treasure Mountain was built in 1983 (32 years old) and was renovated in the late 90’s. We are tearing it down because it is “cursed” and has bad pipes. Reading that, and comparing the two, it makes me feel like we are a bunch of spoiled, rich kids. Incredible.

So, I don’t know what to more upset about. Should I be more upset that we seem to want to tear down a school that has some issues but in the scheme of things probably isn’t that bad, or should I be more upset that we are paying a fortune to do it. I’ll probably just hate the decision for all of the above.

Lest you think Provo is just a bunch of “Choose the Right”ers with awful education, and so they can afford to cheap out on schools, I’ll remind you that Provo has the top high school (Timpview) in Utah according to US News and World Reports. So, they seem to know what they are doing.

There are just so many things that are wrong with the process we are heading down. I’ve been watching the Park City School District Master Planning process since January, so i know how we got to where we are. That said, where we are is starting to look like a very bad place.

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…

I was talking to a friend tonight and she said one of those things that makes too much sense. I was explaining the improvements the school district wants. She said, “so they want to spend $20 million on the high school, to add 1 grade?” I said yes. She gave me that look and said, “can’t they build a new school for that?” She has a point.

Then she said something really important. “Why not just rebuild Treasure Mountain Junior High with 7th, 8th, and 9th grade and put 5th and 6th at Ecker Hill? It has to be cheaper and you still get the room to have all day kindergarten in the elementary schools.”

Why didn’t I think of that? Or more importantly, why didn’t the Master Planning Committee think of that?

Right now the plan is to spend about $50 million to add on to the High School, tear down Treasure Mountain, and build a new school at Ecker Hill. What would it cost to rebuild Treasure Mountain for 3 grades? Using national standards, we would take the number of students (about 1200) times 140 square feet per student times $170 per square feet. That gives us a cost of $28 million. Not cheap … but it is half the cost of their current plan.

The school district gets what they say they want with all day kindergarten. The death trap Treasure Mountain International School gets torn down. A new school is built. The number of transitions for students are the same. We keep schools in city. The benefits associated with a centralized Kearns campus are magnified.

Now I’m sure some would say that the real negative with this idea is that it would increase traffic on Kearns. Yet, when the Master planning Committee was talking tonight about adding a school to the Ecker Hill campus, they said traffic was Summit County’s problem to solve. They said that what they were concerned with was education. So, in this case, any traffic issue is Park City Municipal’s issue to solve.

Given that, this almost seems like a no brainer.

I was impressed by the positive atmosphere of the final Park City School District’s Master Planning community meeting on July 21 and the insightful contributions that the many people in attendance made. Many people seem to support the committee and where the plans are headed, and the community still has many ideas that need to be talked through and considered.

During the hour of the meeting designated for comments, many people shared their ideas and concerns with passion, respect, and insight. Some excellent points were made. A few of the community concerns included transportation, walking back and forth between the high school and the sports facilities on the east side of the campus, and costs.

One of the underlying themes of the meeting was separating our wants from our needs. The problem is that we still don’t quite know what our wants and needs are. Some community members argued against the extra costs of an indoor field house, while others pleaded not to let sports and the arts be considered a lower priority.

The many comments and ideas the community had regarding the plans go to show that we may need to slow down the planning process. There are still many things to consider when it comes to the Kearns campus in particular, and I think it’s important that we really think through all the options we still have. I think the positive contributions made at the meeting are an excellent stepping stone to drafting the best possible plan for our district.

I live blogged tonight’s School Board Master Planning Committee Meeting. We are within about a week of the Master Planning Committee making a recommendation to the school board on what changes to make in our districts.

Click Read More to follow along:
(more…)