LR school scenarios face doubt at forum

Residents of southwest Little Rock on Tuesday quizzed Little Rock School District facility consultants about the basis for their building scenarios that call for a new McClellan High and a relocated Cloverdale Middle School in that part of the city.

"I'm hearing the same comments I heard one and a half years ago," parent and community activist Pam Adcock told members of the Fanning-Howey facility study team that is suggesting that a new McClellan High be constructed and that Cloverdale be relocated, possibly on the current McClellan site.

"To me it seems like a done deal," Adcock said at a community meeting at McClellan attended by about 50 people, some of whom echoed the sentiment. "We want to have input and have it taken seriously."

In April 2013, the Little Rock School Board approved the purchase of what is referred to as the Richsmith Lane site, which is behind the Home Depot store on Baseline Road, as a possible site for a new high school.

The board decision to make that $1.37 million purchase surprised and angered some area residents at least partly because of the distance between the new site and the school at 9417 Geyer Springs Road. The board at the same time approved the purchase of two parcels along North Katillus Road for a total $4.2 million for a possible middle school in west Little Rock.

Kelsey Bailey, the district's chief financial officer, said the purchases were made as part of planning for known needs but that the final decisions on how or whether to use the land will be made by the School Board.

Carl Baxmeyer, director of the solutions group for Fanning-Howey, said Tuesday that the school district gave the team -- hired in September -- the task of recommending a facilities plan that improves the learning environment for students and expands the overall capacity of the high schools, which are projected to be at almost 105 percent of the current capacity in 10 years.

The team has developed and publicized different scenarios to do that and is scheduled to make a recommendation to the board in the coming weeks.

Each of the four scenarios at the high school level calls for building a new McClellan at varying enrollment sizes and adding permanent classrooms to Central High to replace nearly a dozen portable buildings on that campus. Two of the four scenarios call for adding classrooms at Parkview High. All scenarios call for making some improvements and repairs at J.A. Fair and Hall high schools.

Baxmeyer said McClellan was selected as the school to be replaced because repair and renovation costs over 10 years would be 46 percent of the replacement cost, the highest among the high schools. McClellan also ranked poorly in regard to educational adequacy, which takes into account the school's natural lighting, indoor air quality and acoustics.

As for Cloverdale, it is built on soft soil, which has required repeated repairs to attempt to stabilize the foundation. The school could be relocated to the McClellan site to make use of the existing auditorium and gymnasium that are in good shape, if not the academic building, Baxmeyer said.

Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, said she had concerns about relocating Cloverdale to a repurposed McClellan site, saying the facility was not conducive for a middle school and that middle school students -- even more than high school students -- need the draw of a new building.

Metro on 06/11/2014

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