Board explores LR school-redo ideas

Little Rock School Board members for the first time Thursday questioned facility consultants about recommendations for building, expanding and repairing school campuses at a cost approaching $500 million.

Board members made no decisions on a draft plan containing different scenarios for improving the school buildings for about 26,000 students who make up the state's largest district.

Already, some parents and a civil-rights lawyer have criticized some of the recommendations for failing to include a new high school in west Little Rock and suggesting the closure of schools on the east side of the city.

The plans call for a new west Little Rock middle school and a replacement school for McClellan High in southwest Little Rock. Also proposed are the relocation of Cloverdale Middle to the current McClellan building, and the addition of large classroom wings to Central High and Dunbar Middle schools, with smaller additions at multiple other campuses.

Scenarios include replacement schools for Bale, David O. Dodd and Meadowcliff elementaries, the addition of activity centers to nearly all elementary buildings, and the possible conversion of Carver Magnet Elementary School into an early childhood education center.

Carl Baxmeyer, a principal officer in the Fanning-Howey architecture and engineering firm of Indianapolis, said the final recommendations will be sent for consideration again at a School Board work session Aug. 22 and the board's regular monthly meeting Aug. 28.

Fanning-Howey Associates, Inc., is leading a team of five companies of architects, engineers, educational planners and demographers in the facilities study.

Board President Greg Adams said he hopes the board will vote on a building plan and an accompanying plan for financing the improvements in August or early September, before the Sept. 16 school board election.

The election could alter the membership of a board that has been working on the facilities study for about a year, he said.

Board members Jody Carreiro and Norma Johnson are both running for re-election to the board in contested races. Their opponents, Jim Ross, who is challenging Carreiro, and Joy Springer, challenging Johnson, also attended Thursday's work session.

"This is not just about building new facilities," Deputy Superintendent Marvin Burton told the board about the recommendations. "Every single school is listed in this plan. It touches every facility that we have."

Carreiro said that he is continuing to process the facility report, which is more than 300 pages and includes rankings of the buildings from best to worst in terms of their physical conditions.

"What I do know is that when we make a decision, it has to be one that we can tell a story with. That story has to be about the future of our district and the future of our facilities. We can't talk about a new McClellan High School as a singular piece, but it is part of a story in which we have a new shiny southwest high school facility and a new shiny southwest middle school facility. And we can draw a picture of how that bubbles out to help children all over the district."

Adams said the building talk "boils down to kids. We are talking about kids having music rooms and art rooms and places for kids having a place to have P.E. in the elementary schools and kids not having to walk outside to classrooms in trailers, which are not as secure and are not as good for education. "

Adams emphasized that Thursday's work session was meant to give the board members an opportunity to question the recommendations, brainstorm and float ideas that may or may not come to fruition.

But the proposal to repurpose Carver Magnet School, which is on East Sixth Street, in a largely industrial part of the city generated several questions and infuriated Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock, who was in the audience.

"No more closing schools in the black community," Walker told the board, later adding that the board is wrong to make decisions on the building plan without holding public forums on it.

He said that the district could solve the problem of Carver's declining enrollment by redrawing attendance zones to assign more pupils to the school.

Walker said he will submit a petition to the board for a special community meeting on the building proposals. By law, school boards have to meet if presented with a petition signed by 50 or more signatures.

Walker, the longtime lawyer for the black students known as the Joshua intervenors in the desegregation case, accused Adams of trying to "resegregate" the city's schools, which Adams later called "ridiculous" and "untrue."

Currently, Carver is an interdistrict math and science magnet school, drawing pupils from all three Pulaski County school districts as a way to voluntarily desegregate a school that would otherwise have a predominantly black enrollment reflecting the racial makeup of the area.

The school is projected to have an enrollment of 353 this school year in comparison to nearly 600 pupils in past years. However, the issue is complicated by the fact that the magnet school has had a waiting list of 150 or more pupils in recent years. The black pupils on that waiting list couldn't attend the school without skewing the required 50-50 black-to-white racial composition that defines a magnet school in Little Rock.

The district has been released from federal court desegregation monitoring and the interdistrict student transfer component to the Little Rock magnet school program is being phased out. That means special state funding for educational programs and transportation will no longer be available to entice Pulaski County Special and North Little Rock school district pupils to attend Carver.

Adams questioned whether the Carver magnet program could be preserved by moving it to a southwest Little Rock location.

Beth Penfield, senior project manager for Brailsford & Dunlavey Inc. of Washington D.C., one of the consulting team members, said that in developing the building scenarios, the consultants sought to eliminate all the portable classroom buildings in the district and replace those with permanent classrooms.

Additionally, the plans include the addition of activity space at the elementary schools, most of which do not have gymnasiums. Art and music rooms are planned for each of the elementary schools, either as building additions or, if possible, through the conversion of existing classrooms.

Penfield said the planners sought to create the greatest level of efficiency and cost effectiveness in resolving the district's building problems, which include overcrowding at the middle schools and high schools that are filled to capacity. The plans call for the addition of as many as 50 classrooms at Central High, and classroom wings of 12 to 24 classrooms each at Dunbar Middle, Henderson Middle and Mabelvale Middle schools. Classroom additions are also planned for Forest Park, Mabelvale, Otter Creek and Pulaski Heights elementaries.

Moving Cloverdale Middle from Hinkson Road to the McClellan site on Geyer Springs Road will create a school of about 1,100 seats, which will help ease overcrowding at the middle school level, Penfield said.

The overall building plans incorporate repairs to buildings, replacements for roofs and utility systems that are approaching the end of their life cycles, additional security features, and installation of air conditioning and other modernization to the cafeteria kitchens at 25 of the schools.

Wayne Adams, the district's director of plant services, praised the consultants' work in identifying the needs of the school campuses.

"They're the best we've ever had and I've been through this twice before," Adams said.

He also said that he anticipates that the actual costs for the repairs and the new schools will actually be less once the projects are put out to bid.

The district is paying the consulting team $974,260 plus expenses for the work.

A section on 08/15/2014

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