News-Record.com

This is interesting news Morgan, but I did find something in browsing through the attached link. Wake apparently has detailed specifications for its school construction (http://www.wcpss.net/facilities/design_guidelines.html)
and it would be obvious that this is a major factor in the district's ability to answer questions as to why a school costs a certain amount of dollars. They have defined the quality to be built into its schools. To my understanding, GCS does not yet have such a document to guide it, thus, the public has little confidence in the district's estimates of a school's costs. And, for that matter, without such a document, there can be little consistency from one school project to another. In absence of such a documnet, who makes construction decisions?

Wally World,
I try to address some of those questions in my construction stories running soon. But you are right and Wake County has been credited with being more transparent to the public in this area. One impressing step Wake school and county leaders did a few years ago was to draft joint planning assumptions (I'm not sure if that was what you were looking at). Those assumptions tell you where both boards stand on issues like energy-efficiency, class sizes, site size, etc. Mike Burriss, the assistant superintendent of facilities, also told me that school, county and muncipal leaders in Wake work together on enrollment projections. That way the boards can't as easily play off each other, like what you see in Guilford.

GCS is dealing with a lot of perception issues, much of which can be addressed by just answering the public's questions (and adding a bit more information to its Web site). It may be the case that the district can sell the taxpayers on some of the features they support.

Morgan,

When you do your report in the near future, you might address something that I found in the DeJong/Summit Report. They did a complete study of school project costs comparing eight school districts in located in the Southeast, including GCS. While the information in the study is quite voluminous, I thought that a good bottom line of comparison of the schools districts was the Total Project Cost per Student, a sort of school construction report card if you will. Here are the reported Total Project costs per Student for those districts for High Schools (which are more complex than elementary and middle schools).

Charlotte - $25,548.25
Clarke Co. GA (Athens) - $15,756.27
Fairfax Co, (No. VA) - $Not Reported
GCS - $31,400.55
Gwinnett Co. (Atlanta Metro) - $9,685.88
Orange Co. (Orlando) - $17,805.73
Wake County $26,625.41
Winston-Sale,/Forsyth $25.145.43
Weighted Average (Excl Wake)$17,717.66

So, anyway you want to look at it, GCS is the most expensive. Charlotte, Wake, and Forsyth are within $1,480 of each other, or an average of $25,772. GCS is 22% more than the average of the three. For a school with 300,000 sq. ft. that translates into almost $17,000,000 per school.

This information can be found at this link:
http://www.wakegov.com/NR/rdonlyres/E7B2D6CC-4462-4F75-B528-DC9F779398EB/0/cfacreport.pdf

One thing that I noted that definitely affects the total project cost is that GCS plans much smaller schools than the other schools in the study, other than Forsyth which is about the same. Guilford is planning high schools with a capacity of 1,200 students, where as Forsyth is planning at 1,000 capacity. The other schools in the study are planning high schools in the 2,000 to 3,000 range. This, of course, affects total project costs. So, is the higher construction costs justified by small schools?

Also, in comparing GCS and Forsyth, whereas GCS is planning high schools for 1,200 students, They are allowing 225 sq. ft. per student, Forsyth is planning for 1,000 students and 200 sq. ft. per student. The net result is a GCS school that is 70,000 sq. ft. greater than a Forsyth school, but a capacity of 200 more students. That's 35% more school for 20% more students. This would begin to account for greater construction costs.

Wally World,
While the Summit/DeJong report was a good starting point, we at the N&R decided not to do a full story on it because GCS only included 3 schools for the study and we did not think that would be representative when you look at all of the schools studied in places like Forsyth and Wake. GCS follows state recommendations with class sizes, but tends to go with the higher range. For example, I believe that GCS follows state recommendations for adding in space for computers in a classroom where Forsyth skimps a bit more on that. So the question is, would the public rather save money by having smaller classrooms? Keep in mind that the smaller the classrooms, the more you may need to meet enrollment projections. Also keep in mind the state trend to lower class sizes in elementary school, which also contributes to the need for more space.

Morgan, Sorry, but your arguments are too subjective. How small is small? How big is big? I think there have been several posts with data here that seem to show we are overspending.

Morgan,

What were the three GCS schools in the study? why weren't those schools representative? Why did the study include so many more schools in Wake and Forsyth?

The difference of 25 sq. ft. per student seems rather generous don't you think, especially when in a high school built for 1,200 students, it means 30,000 more sq. ft. in a 300,000 sq. ft. school? That alone adds 10% to the cost to build a school. I suppose to answer your question, if we have to reduce space somewhat per student to build schools at an acceptable cost, I would go along with that. It's better than not having new schools at all. I just don't see voters approving bonds to build $88 million in Guilford at this time, when other districts are doing it for far less. I don't think that the market will bear it. We see other districts getting smart and becoming more economical in its approach, so why doesn't GCS see it? GCS is going to have to come to the understanding that they can't afford to go first class all the time.

One of the discussions that I think that we should be having is whether building high schools for 1,200 students is cost-effective when it seems that other districts are building high schools for 2,000 - 3,000 students. There may well be some downsides to larger high schools, but there are big upsides from a cost standpoint. GCS needs to start thinking outside of the box on this. What they are doing now isn't working.