By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
With a facilities study – expanded to include two additional buildings – now complete, the Burlington Area School District Board of Education on Monday heard the price tag for maintenance.
Among the district’s four elementary schools, one intermediate school, a middle and a high school – plus the district’s administration building and the free-standing building at 209 Wainwright – the total cost for repairing everything is about $11.1 million.
The next step in the process will be a presentation by the architectural firm handling the study in March, outlining a variety of options to move forward with repairs.
That includes three different tiers of repairs: Level 1, where items are listed in poor condition and replacement recommended; Level 2, which indicates fair condition; and Level 3, where items remain in good condition.
There were few surprises in the report. After the initial presentation by Plunkett Raysich Architects in December, the group then gave its report on the facilities to Scherrer Construction, which gave a cost estimate for the repairs.
Not surprisingly, the building in the need of the most repairs is Karcher Middle School – parts of which are nearing 100 years old – and includes several additions, the youngest of which is 30 years old.
The total cost for all three tiers of repairs for that building alone is $5 million, though only about $133,000 of that is in Level 1 repairs.
“Not unexpected,” said BASD Superintendent Peter Smet Tuesday. “Given that it’s the oldest building besides the administration building.”
The district administration building – the former Lincoln School – has the second-highest list of Level 1 repairs at $134,200, while the second-high overall repair bill is at Waller Elementary School.
However, Smet cautioned that priorities have yet to be established with the renovation and repair process. While Level 1 repairs are the most critical, Smet said the School Board needs to see the preliminary plans to decide when and how to move forward.
“This is just a report of the needs to maintain what we have,” Smet said.
The board will have to decide whether to work on specific schools, or within sets of repairs – or some combination of both.
Also not included at this point are any potential enhancements. Individuals in the community have brought forth different ideas over the past few years that may or may not see the light of.
The final factor in the options could be grade configurations. A study recently completed by the district showed a number of different possibilities of how to align schools. Within that format could exist options for closing a specific school for repair, relocating grades or even tearing down a school.
Smet said Nick Kent of Plunkett Raysich would bring back somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 options as a starting point.
“As we develop and look at hybrids, it could develop into more than that,” Smet said.
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