Superintendent Offers Two Recommendations For New Central Office Location
Decatur Metro | June 12, 2012From the Superintendent’s letter to the School Board, prior to tonight’s meeting…
I am providing you with information on possibilities for a central office location. I am not asking you to vote at this time. I believe we have two options. One is Beacon Hill, moving into the complex with the City; the other would require the central office to be built on the high school campus. There are pros/cons to both options. Clearly, we wish to move on this decision so Westchester can be placed back into service as a school.
And then there’s this detail from the Director of Facilities Jason Ware…
As part of the process of selecting the location for the new Central Office, we have explored a few different options.
Option 1: The City of Decatur has begun the preliminary exploration of re-developing the current Beacon Hill Complex that would consist of a renovated police station, active living space, new gym, and office space. After discussions with Ms. Peggy Merriss, the Decatur Commission, and the City of Decatur’s design team, an offer was submitted to CSD to acquire the office space and use it as a Central Office. The office space is 25,000 square feet (SF) and the City of Decatur would be responsible for designing and constructing the space with the support of CSD staff. CSD would then acquire the space for approximately $5.5 million ($220/SF) on a turnkey basis. As part of the acquisition, there are discussions regarding including approximately 50 parking spaces that would be used solely by CSD during regular business hours. After regular business hours, the City of Decatur would have access to the parking spaces.
Option 2: Build a new Central Office on the property located at Commerce and Howard. The estimated cost to build a 25,000 SF office space is $4.5 million (180/SF), which includes $1 million for potential water issues. The downside to using this space exclusively for a Central Office is it takes away the opportunities for future expansion of DHS.
We have searched and continue to search for other locations but have not found a suitable third option as of yet.
The superintendent recommends tabling any action on the central office until we can enlist the services of the Pre-construction firm.
h/t: Patch
Option 3: Rent
They can’t b/c of restrictions of their money. If they buy, they can use SPLOST funds. If they rent, it comes out of the operating budget. Or something like that.
Here is another 3rd option. If they are inclined to build on the high school property, design a building that will meet the current needs, but can easily be converted for school use later. They could always build/buy another central office in the future if DHS is expanded. (The obvious problem with this approach is the fact that it is impossible to project our future needs, such as size of the school building. The projections for FAVE didn’t hold for 2 years, so I doubt we can accurately predict our needs a decade from now).
But, given the current enrollment projections, it seems likely that DHS will need to be expanded at some point. $1,000,000 more now may save a ton of money in the long run. This needs to be looked at carefully. But, I am encouraged by the acknowledgement of potential long-term complications with option 2 and it appears these are being factored into the equation.
It’s always more attractive to CSD to build because that approach uses outside SPLOST funding. Renting, leasing, making-do all take money out of the operating budget. Since that means competition for funding with classroom instruction, I support the approach that spares the operating budget. But I did not realize this dynamic way back when the 2004 school closings and reconfiguration occurred. I wish it had been more transparently admitted and communicated. Closing schools reduced operating costs which was attractive to CSD. The consequences–millions and millions and millions of dollars spent adding on to remaining schools and then eventually rebuilding Fifth Avenue–was like free money from the perspective of the operating budget. A no brainer. I wish I had understood and that the Board and Administration had made it easier to understand. The “We love our ALL our K-5 Schools” yard signs that Clairemont families put up and then the efforts by Westchester and Glennwood and some other families to go to four K-5 schools were doomed from the beginning.
I guess the Big H property has been rejected. It wouldn’t have worked anyway–the community would have been incensed to have to pay $5.00 to park when they registered their kindergartners, delivered their student transportation forms, or came to Board meetings or whatever!
Re “….we wish to move on this decision so Westchester can be placed back into service as a school”: I hope that the reservicing of Westchester as a school is not held up by the plans for admin offices. Central Office staff could be in temporary locations while building or renovating occurs for permanent digs. City staff have done that plenty of times when City Hall or fire stations or Decatur Rec were renovated. There’s probably some rooms that could be used at Glennwood Elementary, RMS, and DHS still, though not for long as the student bulge ages. It would do Central Office staff good to be in the trenches in various schools for a year or two–kind of an extended site visit. (Dare I mention “admin cottages”, a spin-off from the “learning cottages” we have learned to love and cherish at our elementary schools?) The whole west-of-Scott area is starting to look like the Oakhurst of the last 5 years–teeming with strollers and parents without gray hair (yet). As Oakhurst property values skyrocketed, folks looking to buy into Decatur have turned to some of the cheaper homes on the northside. I’ve talked to parents of preschoolers in the area who are crossing their fingers that Westchester reopens in the next year or two.
Admin cottages. Hee hee.
+1 for Admin Cottages.
Love the thought of Admin Cottages! Perfect. However, I have to ask where these “cheaper homes” are? As someone who saw just about every property in Decatur in the last year, I couldn’t find “cheap” anywhere – unless I looked just OUTSIDE city limits.
That was cheap-ER, not cheap. And it mostly has to do with the era of renovation. Neighborhood renovation goes in waves as new families with young children move in. So a lot of folks moved into the Westchester area for the fine school in the 1980s and 1990s and renovated the asbestos-shingled and small brick homes that were there. Now those renovations are dated and seem small next to the McMansions and McCraftsmen cottages of elsewhere and sell for less than hot properties….. (My work email often is clogged with “Desperately seeking home in Oakhurst or nearby….” ) So some families with small children are finding the way to get into Decatur—if at all—is in pockets of older, dated, formerly brick homes, like what you find west of Scott.
I’m so glad I bought my home when single years and years ago at a time when folks thought that Virginia Highland and Buckhead were the only cool places.
Gotcha. We didn’t really care where we were in Decatur as long as we were in CSD. The whole town isn’t really very big so no matter where we want to go, it doesn’t take long to get there. A follow-up question about Westchester. We live east of Scott. Do you think we’d stay with Clairemont Elementary? I know you have no way of knowing how they’d break it up but I thought maybe you knew how it was before.
Who knows? At the time of the 2004 reconfiguration, Westchester’s catchment area did go east of Scott. Garden Lane (either all or some), the western half of Lamont, and all of Coventry, Nelson Ferry, Pinetree, and Woodlawn went to Westchester, as well as west of Scott and the Drexel/Upland/Adair/Parkwood area. I heave heard that, once, all of Garden Lane went to Clairemont. My guess is that it will depend on enrollment at Clairemont. If it’s not full, it’s probably preferable not to divide up streets like Garden and Lamont. If nothing else, it confuses new home buyers who want to know their school district. On the other hand, it would be weird for folks living on the Scott end of those streets to ignore the school right across the street and go in the opposite direction to Clairemont.
Given that it’s likely that Westchester, Clairemont, and Oakhurst will all be fine K-3 schools, the most important issue will be the transition for the children moving from one school to another because of new catchment lines being drawn. Given the short 4-grade span of the schools, it would be nice if students already in a school could be grandfathered in if their families wanted them to stay for the duration and not undergo an extra transition. It makes life more complicated for Central Office for a few years but should be do-able with enough lead time and planning. Incremental change is often the wisest choice. I have always thought that the closing of Westchester would have gone much smoother if an incremental approach had been taken.
Thanks for the info. I agree about the incremental approach. It’s actually why I was asking the question. I was thinking that my son would start school at Clairemont, then go to Westchester, then 4/5, and so on. That’s a lot of movement without ever changing houses. At least all the schools in CSD are on par with each other so if you do go to one or another, you’re not getting a huge difference like in other school districts. And, if this is not truly the case, then I think I’d prefer NOT knowing.
But how does incremental change for 3 grades do anything but overcrowd the schools even more? It makes no sense from an operations stand point.
The change would take longer, so it would have to be started earlier. Easy for me to say, I know it would be inconvenient and I haven’t thought through exactly what I mean by an incremental approach and all the logistics. But the emphasis should be on the students, not the parents or staff. Most Westchester and Glennwood students, my older (then young) included, did fine when the schools closed as K-5s, but some, especially the older students who had been looking forward to some of the traditional events and programs that Westchester offered to 4th and 5th graders, did not do well at all. At Clairemont and Glennwood 4/5, there was zero acknowledgement and discussion with the students of the huge change that had happened. It was more than a shift in a few students, but a change in the communities themselves–the Westchester area is still a different place than it was in terms of real estate desirability and a sense of community. Just because administrators wanted to play down the change didn’t mean it was truly minimized for the children involved. I think a more flexible and open approach would have worked 1000% better.
I heard Dr. Edwards speak to this in the spring. She mentioned something about Westchester being a “choice” school…however you take that and it housing some Pre-K classes to take some burden of the ECLC.
FYI, I live in Adair Park, which is the Adair-Lansdowne-Drexel-Melrose streets, and we were in the Westchester district before, and redistricted to Oakhurst. Big thanks to Fred Boykin who helped assure safe walking to school because he managed to get the PATH configured to ne pedestrian friendly to those crossing the tracks, and we have several crossing guards there.
If Westchester reopened, the parents in our neighborhood would lobby strongly to remain in Oakhurst.
There is no extra room at Glennwood this coming year with an additional 3rd grade class taking up at least one of the rooms that was used for specials this year.
Wow. Already. Well, admin cottages it is!
Forgive my ignorance, but where was the central office located when Westchester *was* serving as an elementary?
When Westchester was a school (I was on the PTA board when it closed), the central offices were in the basement of the old DHS gym. Very cramped and unsuitable.
I have selfish reasons to favor the Beacon Hill property, because I fear for the future of the DHS community garden that I chair. This volunteer garden and labor of love would likely disappear if the central offices were built on the high school campus. In fact, I am surprised to hear this is still an option, as I thought they were going for the Beacon Hill plan.
Beacon Hill really needs some refurbishing, so this might be a great way to kill two birds with one SPLOST. Plus, this should provide a longer-term solution to the Admin office issue.
There were offices in the old gym building (which no longer exists). They were cramped and dated. And the space was not enough to accomodate the growth that ocurred in the Central Office in the last 10 years. But they were centrally located vs. in the northwest corner. Not sure if some Central Office staff were housed outside of that building, in the schools. But just like we can reconfigure our school catchment areas, because we’re only 4 square miles, we can reconfigure our Central Office locations. It could be a walk and roll administration!
I’m pretty sure Simone Elder in transportation had her office at RMS during that time.
Crammed in above the gym at the high school.
We do not need to spend more money on giving fancy offices to our already heavily bureaucratic
school administration. Spend the money on additional teacher assistants.
But it’s two different pots of money. The fancy offices, or even modest government-level cubicles, will come from SPLOST funds. Paraprofessionals come from the operating budget. Not building won’t put a single extra penny into the operating budget for paraprofessionals, smaller classroom sizes, materials, or anything else there. That’s why CSD keeps selecting space options that result in building new additions or structures. I cannot blame them for wanting to spare the operating budget. Whether the entire process of eliminating schools and using one for Central Office, then building millions of dollars of additions, then adding “learning cottages”, then expanding to two new schools, then moving Central Office and reopening the school that it was in was a long-term wise choice is another story. Taxpayers do pay at some point with SPLOST but the school system doesn’t have to make a transparent choice between students and offices.
Is the SPLOST restriction something that we could vote locally to change to allow renting of office space for administration?
Maybe one of the tall buildings in Decatur would condo a floor for them. Then the school system could buy it. How many SF do they need?
It seems like all school systems go through cycles of needing more or less space in their lifetime. With space fluctuation it does not seem to make sense to build more.
We can’t vote locally to change the spending limitations of the SPLOST. There are several counties in GA where a Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) allows a penny to be spent on school operating expenses. Bulloch Co, where I went to school, is one of these counties and has successfully utilized the LOST for years. The GA Constitution would have to be amended to add more counties to the list of those utilizing the LOST. It’s an attractive option in these times when public school systems are struggling.
Ha! I grew up in Effingham
If you were there 1992-1996, then we may have crossed paths. Effingham and SHS were big football rivals (or at least we thought so in Statesboro). I was home two weeks ago. It was hot as hell and the gnats attacked me. I was happy to return to Decatur.
I thought the city issued bonds to build and renovate the schools and rec center. What it a combination of SPLOST and bonds?
Not the basement, but the floor in front of and above the old gym. Free Westchester!
So, no one has an issue with this costing $4.5- $5 million dollars?
I agree with those who suggest that the system seems to be set up a bit absurdly favoring spending more money on “new” rather than finding adequate office space, as a rental or lease.
No business I know simply builds a new building every time they outgrow or re-purpose an existing space. They might, but its not automatic.
The argument that “it comes from SPLOST” seems to also “say”, “… don’t worry, it’s someone else’s money…”
Yikes, this is a small district, with a small population, we can’t just keep building these buildings and writing check upon check.(how much did W’chester cost to refit, and now refit again?)
I have seen CSD spend a LOT of money over the years, some of it well spent, some of it not.
What I have issue with is a system that allows them only one path to fix the current problem, along with the underlying issue that CSD really doesn’t do adequate analysis to understand its future enrollment population and the pressure it places on existing resources.
They don’t need consultants for that, they need some sound statistics in concert with an ongoing database of city residents that will help track school aged kids.
Whole companies do this work every day. it’s a small city. We should be able to do this.
…and yes, I know there will be constraints, but for God’s sake let’s bring the management of the school population demands into the 21st century with a data based statistical model that works.
Or , just spend the cash, what’s $4.5- 5million dollars anyway? We are worth it, right? Our kids are, right?
I think we should think of the cash as our cash. How much would you spend on this if it were your money?
What kind of planning would you require CSD to do if it were your money?
I have given up. The two buckets of money–one easy for CSD to access and the other causing so much pain in the operating budget that no one wants to touch it–seem to drive things and evidently have since day one when my first child stepped into the welcoming domain of Ms. Kuebler at Westchester. All other arguments and rationalizations have been secondary to this basic fact of life. I wish I had realized it earlier and given up then. Nothing that the families at the original Fifth Avenue, College Heights, Westchester, Glennwood, and Clairemont could say was going to change that. So instead they disputed amongst one another about what schools should be closed which was a huge distraction and mistake. And I have to admit that I do not have a great solution to offer CSD because I don’t want the cost of learning cottages or facility rentals to take away teachers and resources from the operating budget because that will hurt my children and all the students.
I agree that CSD could improve its manipulation, interpretation, and presentation of data, whether it’s financial, educational, survey, or other data. Sometimes what is presented at Board meetings and to the community is generalizations without enough detail to be able to judge the quality and interpretation of the information. One of the healthiest things that has happened lately is that more candidates have been running for School Board and I hope that continues. When only one candidate runs, there’s less information and discussion shared. A healthy dose of transparency and open discussion is good for school systems. DeKalb County Schools is an example of how fast a school system can go from healthy to almost ruined. I’m so glad that CSD is a completely different game but am aware that things can change.