By Emma Bowen Meyer
April 24, 2008 07:23 am
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PENDLETON — The South Madison school board will be hard pressed to meet its goal of renovating the current middle school for under $8 million dollars.
The cost estimates were presented at Thursday’s board meeting by Martin Truesdell and Randy Stair from Stair Associates, the architectural firm used by the corporation in the past. Truesdell and Stair reminded the board and the handful of citizens at the meeting that between now and the bidding process, costs could rise or fall.
Board members had expressed the necessity of renovation due to crowding at Pendleton Elementary and Maple Ridge. Superintendent Thomas Warmke said that by 2010 there would not be enough rooms in Maple Ridge for the students projected to attend.
The least expensive option, a sixth-grade center, is only a couple hundred thousand dollars less than an intermediate school that does not use the three-story portion of the building. These are the cheapest options because both would involve sealing off the high rise rather than renovating it.
The high rise would then run only enough heat to keep the building from freezing and enough air conditioning to keep humidity from damaging the building.
The cost for the sixth-grade center was estimated between $7.2 million and $9 million. The intermediate school was estimated between $7.4 million and $9.3 million. Another estimate was given for an intermediate school with an addition that would enable all classrooms to have windows -- $7.8 million to $9.5 million.
“Classrooms with windows are a better learning environment for students,” Warmke said.
“A lot of studies out there have shown that academic performance is greatly enhanced by windows, particularly in kindergarten through sixth grade,” agreed Truesdell. “They don’t worry so much about high school kids because they tend to move around a lot from class to class, but younger kids that are in the same room all day without a window don’t perform as well as those with a window.”
While the sixth-grade center is less expensive altogether, it is more expensive per student. A sixth-grade center would only serve 350 students while an intermediate school would serve 530 students, thus providing more population relief.
An estimate for an intermediate school that included the three-story high rise was $10 million to $12.4 million. And the most expensive estimate was for another elementary school at $10.6 million to $13 million.
Warmke recommended the board make a decision by late May or early June so parents would have time to give input before summer break.
Truesdell said that if they were given approval by early June, bids for the work could start coming in by January 2009, work could begin by June 2009, and the building could be finished by September 2010.
He also said that work could be finished while classes were being conducted elsewhere in the building in 2010. Stair Associates was able to work in that fashion when constructing East Elementary.
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