For three months, a group of citizens worked toward a consensus on which Springfield public school buildings most need major renovations or reconstruction, and if and when to ask taxpayers to extend the district’s debt service levy and support a bond issue to finance it. A large majority of the group members voted in favor of putting the issue before taxpayers ASAP.
Now the ball is dropped in the school board’s court, as Tom Prater, one of the group members, said at the start of Tuesday’s school board study session.
At least one school board member later expressed skepticism about the plan, saying he was not willing to provide “a blank check,” unless his questions are resolved.
During Tuesday's meeting, the co-chairs of the school facilities task force took board members through the three-month process of how the group reached the majority decision to recommend the board ask voters in April to approve a $220 million school bond issue.
The task force created a priority list of projects to tackle with the money if voters approve. Those recommendations are estimated to cost $232 million. That leaves the board with some big decisions to make, task force co-chair David Hall said. Redistricting of school attendance boundaries could play a role, as could a shuffling of priorities.
The board members will dive into that at a regular board meeting on Oct. 25, but a discussion following Tuesday’s presentation offered a preview of key questions that need to be addressed. Here are some of the big ones.
The recommended bond is $12 million short of financing the proposed projects. Now what?
The majority of the task force settled on asking for $220 million because it wouldn’t require a change to taxpayers' current rates. In 2019, voters approved an 18-cent cent increase to the SPS debt service levy as part of a first phase of school improvement projects, and community task force members who worked on that bond issue promised then that the second phase wouldn’t raise taxes. Members of the latest task force said it was important to stick to that promise.
So now the board gets to make the call on what that money would address if they move forward with a bond issue.
The task force recommended five projects:
- Building a new Pipkin Middle School, ideally on a new, more spacious site ($53 million).
- Safety upgrades, including new storm shelter-gymnasiums at six elementary schools and other security measures installed across the district ($37.3 million).
- A renovated Pershing K-8 ($50.5 million) that might become a middle school.
- A new Robberson Community School ($31.7 million).
- A new Reed Academy ($59.5 million).
Hall said the board could consider hitting pause on one recommended school project, or holding off on some of the safety upgrades. Renovating Bingham Elementary School was the sixth-ranked priority among task force members, co-chair Bridget Dierks said, and moving that up in priority above another school could change the second phase bottom line. The two estimates provided to the group for renovating Bingham totaled about $22.7 million and about $31.2 million.
Another possibility is that one or more of the projects comes in under budget, allowing for work to start on lower-priority projects. That happened the first time around, though district officials and task force members have pointed to high construction costs and inflation in general as reasons lightning might not get caught a second time.
Regardless, board president Denise Fredrick said, the need is not going away.
“We have buildings in need, and they’re not going to repair themselves,” she said.
Deputy superintendent John Mulford said the next step for the board will take place at the Oct. 25 board meeting. If, after that discussion, board members are in support of a bond issue, they have until late January to finalize the language that will appear on the ballot.
Should Pershing K-8 lose the K-5 part? And what does the future hold for Robberson?
In its recommendations to the board, the task force provided renovation options for Pershing if it remained a K-8 school, or if the 170 or so elementary students were moved elsewhere and Pershing became strictly a middle school. Even with eight additional classrooms added to two neighboring elementary schools, the middle school-only renovation cost $5 million less.
Board member Kelly Byrne asked district staff Tuesday night about providing a third option that used a “scalpel” approach to renovating the school, which was built in 1957.
“If we're able to get by with a little bit less on Pershing, then that might be the difference between us getting Robberson and Reed done and affecting more kids in the district instead of just saying, ‘OK, let's just remodel the whole thing,'” Byrne said.
Mulford said looking into that will be a time-consuming process, and he asked for board direction on what the school will be before directing staff to look at ways to trim renovation costs.
“If we're gonna have conversation around it becoming a true middle school versus a K-8, you've really got to kind of land that decision before we do too much around a third option,” he said. And if the board decides to explore converting Pershing into a middle school, Mulford said, community feedback should be sought as well.
Redistricting, or redrawing neighborhood school boundaries and potentially closing or consolidating schools, was not an issue that was part of the task force’s recommendations, but it came up at the last full task force meeting and was one of several themes Hall suggested would be central to board discussions. Mulford said it would particularly influence the discussion, and timetable, of work on Robberson. Currently, he said, about 170 students attend the school on the north side of Springfield. The plans to replace it call for a 350-student capacity facility.
“To me, that's a big one,” Byrne said, adding that district boundaries should be examined before spending $31 million to build a school to serve twice its current population. Mulford said a population study could take about a year to complete, adding that administrators and task force members alike would understand if other projects moved ahead on the timetable while that was finished.
Board member Shurita Thomas-Tate, who served as a board liaison for the task force, said the task force understood that recommendations could be adjusted, and that the opportunity exists to still get Robberson done, albeit on a different timeline.
If Reed moved up in the priority rankings ahead of Robberson, Dierks said the voting members would be understanding of that.
“Certainly the task force supports that because it was a very, very close vote,” Dierks said. “So those decisions are very much up to you all.”
Will any of it help get Kelly Byrne’s vote?
Along with calling for a third option on the Pershing renovation and an examination of redistricting possibilities, Byrne also said board members should play a role in facility design and monitoring the scope of school construction projects. While he said he saw facility needs, Byrne was the only one who said Tuesday he might not support a bond issue if his questions aren't resolved.
“I’m just not willing to have my vote be a blank check on $220 million,” he said.
“I know some of that’s going to take some time, and maybe we don’t get there. I’m just one vote.”
In June, when the board voted to reconvene the task force to examine a second phase of facility projects, Byrne was the only member to vote against it, saying that current members should be able to pick most of the group. The task force had a mix of veteran members and new members, including Byrne’s school board campaign treasurer, Tyler Creach, Truth in Politics board member Royce Reding and civil engineer Jeff Wells, who broached the subject of closing Robberson earlier this month.
Board member Steve Makoski on Tuesday thanked Byrne for advocating for an approach he said brought balance to the task force, and thanked the co-chairs for guiding the group after having some “rather contentious conversations” about re-forming it.
Makoski served as a board liaison along with Thomas-Tate and Scott Crise. Byrne visited the October task force during the meeting when members voted on priorities and possible bond issue election dates, but said he stayed away deliberately until then.
“It was important that we had people involved in that process,” Byrne said. “It was important for me to not be one of those people just because I was so vocal in the process to begin with. I wanted to be clear that I wasn't vocal in the process in an effort to be controlling over the process. I just wanted the process to be pure. And I thought if I quickly volunteered to be the liaison, that might be getting too involved in that process and I'm glad it happened the way it did so that it could happen in a pure manner and then come back to us.”
The process continues at the Oct. 25 board, which will include a presentation from the district's bond advisor.
“And I'm certainly going to have a lot of questions then, too,” Byrne said.
