CLEARFIELD – Although cost-related concerns had arisen among the Clearfield school board, it still voted, 6-2, to approve a $36 million renovation and expansion project at the Clearfield Area High School so that Architect J. Greer Hayden of HHSDR Architects/Engineers wouldn’t be faced with altering his timeline for the project.
Board members David Glass, Mary Anne Jackson, Jennifer Wallace, Phil Carr, Dr. Michael Spencer and Larry Putt voted in favor of the proposed bid summary. Board members Rick Schickling and Susan Mikesell opposed moving forward with project construction. Board member Tim Morgan was absent from the meeting.
In June 2011, the board approved renovating and expanding the high school campus into grades seven through twelve by a 5-2 vote. Until Monday night, the board was anticipating the high school project to cost approximately $34 million.
Hayden presented bid summaries for both full and partial air conditioning systems, and this aroused discussion with a $1,128,741 cost difference between the two. In the end, the board elected for the installation of full air conditioning, the more costly option at $36,018,821, which includes soft costs, contingency and financing.
In early discussion, Glass pointed out the district must be forward-looking and understand it’d be more costly to convert a partial air conditioning system to full later on. Carr added that classrooms, especially on the third floor, can become “brutally hot” and detrimental to the students’ educational climate.
When asked by Jackson, Hayden couldn’t speak definitively about the energy savings between full versus partial air conditioning. He said it would depend upon the air conditioning management scenario. For example, he said it could be managed by not using air before April 1 and not after Sept. 1. He said the district must narrow down how often the system would be in operation, before it could determine any potential for cost savings.
“(This project) is growing out of sight. Every time I turn around the prices are going up. It’s too much money,” said Schickling. Putt admitted he never envisioned the costs coming in so high for the high school expansion and renovation project.
Wallace said it wasn’t too late for the board to consider alternatives, as it hadn’t awarded the bids and initiated the construction phase. Glass feared if the board started over, it would be forfeiting its ideal borrowing situation and possibly placing this burden on a future board.
Schickling then asked why in earlier presentations, a 500-seat capacity gymnasium would have resulted in a $500,000 savings, and now it would only be $51,000. Superintendent Dr. Thomas B. Otto explained that was because the overall gymnasium size wouldn’t be shrinking, just the seating capacity.
Wallace said it wouldn’t be a stretch for the district to convert the Centre Elementary School into its central administrative offices. The district is currently planning to relocate its administration to the high school campus, where they’ll be housed in its current auxiliary gymnasium.
Otto said the district was exploring many options and considering possibilities of reducing the expansion and renovation project at the Clearfield Elementary School. He said these alternatives involved keeping Centre Elementary and or Bradford Township Elementary open for grades five and six and limiting the CES expansion to 12 classrooms.
However, he said the students wouldn’t have separate music and art rooms, and these would be offered in regular classrooms. He said the school would also lose a computer lab, and it would be a “tight” fit with only a 12-classroom addition.
Otto said the district and Hayden haven’t determined if these alternatives would be cost efficient. He pointed out if Bradford Township would remain open, it would require a significant investment by the district. At that point, Wallace suggested using Centre for the administrative offices, moving fifth grade back to the elementary schools and relocating the sixth grade to the high school’s auxiliary gymnasium.
“We’re committed on the seventh and eighth grades going to the high school,” said Otto. “It is just the costs and where the gym and air conditioning all fit in . . . It is $1 million more than we’d anticipated. We were hoping to get this done without a millage increase. Now, it could be a 1 to 2 mill increase.”
Spencer said the state had placed restrictions on the district’s right to tax and asked districts to become more efficient. He asked where the state expected them to pick up these costs when districts are running out of areas to make cuts.
At that point, Jackson said it would be short-sighted for the district only to install partial air conditioning. She sought for the board to approve the HHSDR bid summary with the full air conditioning system and a vote ensued thereafter.
