One of the arguments the School District’s Master Planning Committee likes to make is that construction cots are rising by 5% per year. So, we better build lots of stuff now because it will cost more to do so later.

While costs are rising, that’s generally ALWAYS been true. Take a look at the Turner Non Residential Building Cost Index since 1997 shown below. You’ll see that 2014’s cost increase of 4.4% is in line with most years historically. It appears that 2015 will be in the same ballpark.

So, is there any real rush to build this because costs are going up? It doesn’t look like any more urgency than any other time. You might also wonder that if 2009/2010’s decreases are any indicator of what happens to costs during a recession, why wouldn’t we wait for that type of period. We are overdue for a recession, after all. Finally, the longer we wait, the more home values will likely have risen, which should mean more money in the school’s bank and a smaller bond.

It seems like there is no reason to rush into building for the sake of forgoing future costs. If we wait a bit, it may even cost a little less.

Instead, the Master Planning Committee seems to be pushing more fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

“You better buy that used car today, ’cause prices are going up next week!”

I received an email from a reader about Park City Schools:

After hearing Dr. Conley’s talk about being the ‘best’ in the nation, I wondered what metric for scholastic achievement they are using.

According to the 2015 US News/ World Report, out of the 20,000 or so high schools in the country, PCHS is not even listed in the top 4,000. We are, in fact right in the middle of the pack, where UT schools are considered, of which Timpview HS in Provo ranked #952 nationally, earning a ‘Silver’ rating.

PCHS does fairly well in Language proficiency – 96%, but falls down in Math – 59% proficiency.

College readiness is 52.4 out of a possible 100

This is particularly infuriating to me, when considering the District’s planned juggling of grades, moving schools out of our community, and schemes for huge sports complexes, all at significant impact to our school neighborhoods and great expense to taxpayers.

I think it’s time the District & Project Team come clean, and re-focus on quality education for Park City students.

I share this person’s frustration. I have been in meetings with School Superintendent Dr. Ember Conley where she has said that in the upcoming US News Rankings that we may be one of the top schools in the country. I love the passion but I question the reality. I checked into the rankings the reader referenced.

The highest ranked school in Utah is Timpview High. It is ranked 952 nationally, as the reader stated. Wasatch High (in Heber) is the 6th ranked school in Utah and #1803 in the nation. There are 14 Utah high schools ranked in the top US News High Schools and unfortunately Park City High isn’t one of them. It appears that approximately 7,000 high schools are ranked nationally by US News, and since Park City isn’t ranked at all, it would put us somewhere between a “ranking” of 7,000 and 21,000 according to the magazine. Getting from where we are to “one of the top schools” will be interesting to see… unless “top school” just means getting ranked somewhere in the top 7,000 schools in the country.

You may say that “US News Rankings are just silly and don’t mean much.” You may be right. I would then bring up that Park City High School was ranked 14th in the state’s SAGE testing. You may say, “those are horrible standardized tests and mean nothing.” You may be right on that too.

Yet, I’ll come back to what the reader said. If you’re going to call yourself the best, then you have to provide SOME metric that demonstrates that. Perhaps there is a metric that proves some outside organization ranks Park City as one of the best high schools in the country. I certainly hope so. For now though, that claim seems to just be something someone said. And as a friend of mine used to say, “just because you say something, it doesn’t make it true.”

Yesterday morning on KPCW, Basin Recreation’s Rena Jordan was on with KPCW’s Leslie Thatcher. Ms. Jordan was giving an update on various topics but the one that caught my attention was about Basin Rec building a fieldhouse on 17 acres of land near the new Silver Creek Village (by Home Depot).

You see, the school district also seems to want an indoor fieldhouse on its Kearns campus. It reminds me of the line from the movie Contact: “The first rule in government spending is ‘why have one when you can have two at twice the price’.”

Here is the exchange:

Leslie Thatcher: And you’d use this parcel of land [17 acres near Silver Creek Village) for indoor recreation?

Rena Jordan: That’s what we have identified this parcel for. We haven’t determine the specifics. There are 3 top priorities that the community and our needs assessment identified, which are an aquatic facility, a second sheet of ice, and mostly our focus would be on indoor recreation space. We have on indoor field in town and we’re going to follow the master plan of the school district to see what parses out of that process because there is still plenty of need…

Leslie Thatcher: So Something similar to what we have with the [Kimball Junction Basin Rec] fieldhouse?

Rena Jordan: Something similar but hopefully bigger. The current field house sits on 2.8 acres and this is 17.3 acres of land. So you can imagine we have the opportunity to build something more expansive but we won’t use all of that 17 acres.

To be fair, Ms. Jordan did say she was watching what was happening with the School Master Planning Committee, with regard to building a fieldhouse. It’s also true that Ms. Jordan has attended at least one of the master planning committee meetings. So, I don’t really put this on her and Basin Rec.

What it highlights is one of the fundamental issues that is plaguing the school’s Master Planning Committee. There seems to be such a rush to get to a bond, that a well thought out process isn’t being used. It’s true the committee has been meeting for over 9 months but this type of decision making often takes two to three years.

It seems to me that the school’s Master Planning Committee should simply decide if the school district has a need for a fieldhouse, community center, tennis courts, soccer fields, etc. Then they should go to the appropriate agency and work with them to put the optimal thing in the optimal place. In the case of the fieldhouse, maybe the school district decides they really have a need for one. They could then work with Basin Rec to decide whether a small fieldhouse in town or an expansive one in Silver Creek makes more sense.

Instead what we may get is a small fieldhouse, crammed on to Kearns, that only works for the school and a big fieldhouse for the community in a more centrally located area. Oh, and the community will likely have to pay for both through bonds.

Please school district… just slow down and include others in some of these decisions. If it takes three years that’s OK. Let’s just do it right.

Tonight the School District is holding their final public meeting on rebuilding the Kearns campus and moving Treasure Mountain Junior High next to Ecker Hill Middle School. If you want to attend, the meeting is at 6PM at the High School. If you can’t make it, I’ll be live blogging the show meeting.

Word has it that the Master Planning Committee members, who have an interest in the sports side of things, are trying to ensure the “Athletic Parents” come to the meeting and voice their opinions. There has been a push during recent Master Planning Committee meetings to limit adding some new athletic facilities (like an indoor field house and rebuilding Dozier field). During previous meetings, major pushback has come from residents around the school who are concerned with the impact of the proposed athletic facilities. So, it appears some committee members are trying to level the conversation.

I personally think having athlete’s parent show up is a good thing. Everyone should have a chance to share their opinion.

Yet, it also dovetails into something that the school district’s planning company (VCBO) said during the last meeting… sports sells [school] bonds, not education.

I guess tonight we’ll see if there are different people who are buying what the school district is selling.

Below is the live blog of today’s Park City School District Master Planning Committee meeting. Please forgive the typos, as these meetings usually move fast.

Click More for the play by play
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I was having dinner with a friend last night, when the subject of the cost of rebuilding Treasure Mountain Junior High (TMJH) came up. She said, “What’s the estimated cost to rebuild Treasure Mountain?” I said, “$26 million.” She said… “$26 million? For 2 grades? TWO GRADES?!?!”

I hadn’t thought of it that way.

This morning I was trying to figure out how much per square foot it costs to build an elementary school. The best study I found was out of Texas. They noted that costs vary by region but they’ve attempted to account for that. It seems that the average cost per square foot for an elementary school in Texas (as of 2103) was $149. Ours is much higher than that.

Yet, there’s a much more interesting point I believe. In the Texas study, they calculate the cost per student of building an elementary school at capacity. That number is $17,461 per student. Now let’s take our school district’s number of $26.2 million in costs to build a new TMJH and divide it by the number of students in 5th and 6th grade during 2014-2015 (773 students). I would assume we wouldn’t want to build the school with too much extra capacity in order to make sure that open enrollment doesn’t impact us too much. Given that, the cost per student served is $33,893.

Those costs are 94% higher per student than in Texas. I know we want The Best Schools in America™, but are our schools going to be 100% better than those in Texas?