Facilities forum outlines projects
High school, Knapp elementary projects discussed
UPPER GWYNEDD >> Staff and school board members from the North Penn School District have painted a clear picture of the district’s long-term to-do list.
“I think this goes a long way to fulfilling our promise to be open and transparent. This is all projects. None of them have been approved yet, and when you speak to prioritizing, that’s what’s in front of us. That’s what we’re going to have to decide,” said school board President Tina Stoll.
District staff and the school board’s support services committee meeting hosted a special facilities forum on Tuesday night, fielding questions from several dozen residents as they described several major projects currently on the drawing board.
Architect David Schrader gave an updated version of his presentation to the board’s support services committee last month, outlining the needs and potential price tag of renovation proj-
ects at Knapp Elementary School, Penndale Middle School, North Penn High School and the district Educational Services Center.
“The first numbers you’re going to see — and they are big numbers — have to do with only returning the buildings to the condition it was in when it opened,” Schrader said.
The architect and the district’s engineer have identified that Knapp Elementary needs all-new stormwater management and ADA accessibility features, a secondary driveway access to keep bus ad car traffic separate, roof repairs, and all new electrical and HVAC systems. Preserving the current building envelope is estimated to cost roughly $15 million, with soft costs including permits, approvals, and furniture bringing the total close to $20 million.
Adding extra classrooms and open areas for group instruction within the current building footprint raises that estimated cost up to $28 to $30 million, while building a new addition and increasing the square footage would cost up to $38 to $40 million, and tearing down the school and building a new one is estimated at $42 to $44 million, Schrader said.
“The goal of all of these is to give you the cost of what you might decide to do over the next several years,” he said.
A similar needs study of Penndale Middle School produced a price tag of roughly $34.6 million, with a $10.4 million estimate for soft costs producing a $45 million estimate for the base option, and adding collaborative space for team activities brings the estimated costs to $56 to $58 million. Upgrading utilities at the district Educational Services Center is estimated to cost around $5 million, a lower cost thanks largely to recent roof repairs, and Director of Facilities and Operations Scott Kennedy outlined a planned renovation of the high school’s Crawford Stadium that’s also estimated to cost roughly $5 million.
A similar overhaul of North Penn High School is projected to cost roughly $138 million, while renovating the existing areas to provide more open project areas and collaborative space could cost up to $147 million, and demolishing parts of the current structure and adding a new 10,000 square foot project area producing roughly the same price, of about $148 million, which could climb as high as $175 million if the project is not started for five more years.
“One thing we see as a positive to the high school plan, is when you renovate a project like this, a lot of those pod centers where you have lecture halls, could easily be converted into these project areas,” Schrader said.
“Then you have all of the different resources from the classroom structures feeding into that,” he said.
Superintendent Curt Dietrich said he has already heard questions from students concerned that taking down part of the current high school for one version of the proposed project could impact their curriculum.
“No, that does not mean we’re getting rid of art (classes). We can stop that rumor immediately,” Dietrich said.
Director of Business Administration Steve Skrocki outlined how the finances fit into the district’s plans, showing how debt payments are currently slated to decrease over the next 10 years, but borrowings for the estimated $216 million needed for the high school and Knapp projects combined, using the most expensive estimates on both, would wrap around current debt obligations.
“We could go through probably nine or 10 different iterations, but I wanted to present what we feel is the worst-case option, in terms of cost,” Skrocki said.
Debt service payments are currently about $15 million per year, and instead of decreasing over the next decade, the $216 million borrowing would require those debt service payments to increase to $20 million annually through the 20402041 school year. Using the $147,965 median assessed home value in the district, that added debt service would require an additional $2,084 in taxes above and beyond what residents’ bills would otherwise be, Skrocki said.
“Keep in mind that this isn’t $2,084 in one year — that’s the total amount of extra tax paid over a 22-year period, for Knapp and the high school,” he said.
Those figures increase or decrease based on an assessed value, Skrocki said, from a cumulative added $704 for a property valued at $50,000 up to an added $4,224 for one valued at $300,000.
Several residents asked how the board would choose which projects to tackle first, and support services committee chairman Jonathan Kassa said those priorities were what the school board hopes to hear from the public.
“No decisions have been made. What we’ve done is, we’ve at least explored what opportunities exist, while being able to understand timelines,” he said.
“Tonight, the community was able to express that education is a top priority. We reset the dialog about optimizing return on investment for dollars spent as opposed to simply not spending. It is very
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