Board members for the Pulaski County Special School District pushed Tuesday for answers and solutions to news this week that the district is $21 million over budget for the construction of the new Mills High and Robinson Middle schools.
A part of the overrun is the cost of fixtures, furnishings and equipment for the two schools, plus the costs associated with converting the existing Mills campus to a middle school. That includes demolishing the existing Fuller Middle School, Chief Financial Officer Denise Palmer and the district's project manager, Jerry Holder, told the board.
Those and other costs -- such as change orders, architect fees and hazardous-material abatement -- are not included in the building contracts for the two schools, which are under construction and scheduled to open next August.
School Board President Linda Remele of Sherwood said it appeared the fixtures and some of the other costs were removed or excluded from what was meant to be a total construction budget, to be absorbed by district funds other than the building fund.
"Someone decided we could take it on with our own money," said Remele, who heads the board that was elected last November and seated in December after the district was under state control for five years.
"I'm thinking what happened was that we couldn't build a quality high school for $40 million, and we want a quality high school, so they started pulling out stuff so we could build a quality high school," she said.
The board's next challenge, Remele said, is to determine how the district will meet the expenses because the district can't furnish the new schools with old equipment, nor can it avoid demolishing Fuller Middle.
Palmer said district administrators have asked for advice on options from Stephens Inc., a financial adviser to the district. Recommendations on paying for the cost overruns will be taken to the board in the coming weeks, Palmer said.
On Monday, an attorney for the district reported to the presiding judge in the district's long-running federal school desegregation lawsuit that the estimated costs for the two campuses total $101 million. That is above the $80 million budget approved for the two campuses -- $40 million each -- by the state in 2016, according to the court filing.
In particular regard to the Mills project, the $40 million budget was inconsistent with the $55 million the district had committed to the judge as far back as 2014 to spend in an effort to make schools in the southeast part of the district, which has a greater concentration of black students, comparable to much newer schools in more affluent and predominantly white sections of the district.
Sam Jones, the district's attorney, assured U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. in the report Monday that the district now expects to spend the promised $55 million on Mills and Fuller. The district will spend $46 million on Robinson, according to the report.
At Tuesday's board meeting, architects Brad Chilcote and Earnest Duckery, along with interior designer Brian Self, all with Wittenberg Delony and Davidson Architects of Little Rock, did a presentation on the Mills project.
The 155,000-square-foot, two-story building will include 21 regular classrooms as well as more specialized spaces for science laboratories, career and technical education, band, music and art. The suite of rooms for the arts also will serve as a storm shelter for all students and staff members.
A black box theater, a 700-seat auditorium and a 700-seat cafeteria with a stage area are among other features of the school. There also will be a 200-seat flat-floor seminar room, a competition-ready gymnasium that will seat 1,200, an auxiliary gym and a two-story library/media center. Windows to allow natural light as well as LED lighting are planned for what is to be a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified campus (LEED).
The main entrance will be at the building's center and will be marked on the inside with a two-story rotunda and circular staircase. Also part of the project is a new football field, baseball field and multipurpose indoor athletic facility, the latter of which opened for use two weeks ago. There is space reserved for a softball field.
The new school is west of the current Mills campus on East Dixon Road, directly behind Fuller Middle School, which is to be demolished next summer at the same time the existing Mills campus is readied for the middle-school students now at Fuller.
Michael Hansberry of Baldwin & Shell Construction Co., construction manager of the Mills project, said the school building is about 49 percent complete.
Metro on 10/11/2017