The issue of Soldotna Elementary School’s reconstruction cost increase (now up 62%) came under scrutiny during the Borough Assembly meeting on Tuesday night, receiving input from representatives of the public, the assembly, and the school district.
Following his quarterly report, Superintendent Clayton Holland immediately had to begin fielding questions on the school’s new $35 million price tag. According to the superintendent, there are several unique factors at play with Soldotna Elementary, complicating the reconstruction design process.
“Soldotna Elementary is one of our oldest buildings. Not the oldest, but there’s no foundation under it, just that new library part at the end,” said Holland. “You know the amount we pay to keep that thing heated, the amount for maintenance upkeep is really essentially is going to pay for itself in the not too long run.”
Holland did hedge on the issue slightly, clarifying that although the project is in fact for a district entity, it isn’t presently under the district’s control. “I want to make something really clear. The district’s not involved with that part of costing things out, I feel like there’s a conspiracy that we’re doing something to get more money or avoid something,” he said. “The borough is working with architecture firm on the design development and they put out a cost, and our concerns are probably the same as a lot of others.
Built in 1960, the school is riddled by issues of age and outdated construction. Dilapidated building conditions aside, the special education needs alone of that particular school present an intangible for which the purchasing and contracting department is struggling to accommodate. Apropos, where most other elementary schools in the district handle one, maybe two special education classes, Soldotna Elementary has six. That, however, is just one of the project’s subjective cost-impacting measures.
“We do have concentration of students with special needs,” Holland said. “You have some what we call intensive needs. So with some programs, you know, it’s possible one of the solutions may be we can move a preschool program, or a special needs IM program to another school because that ends up taking some of the space that we’re allocated for the formula we get from the state. And so it makes it really tight right now. We’re even looking with that amount that [the school is] going to be full.”
After a few questions, Holland differed to John Hedges, KPBSD’s Director of Purchasing and Contracting, who offered some additional unique insights on not only subjective issues at play in the cost increase, but how his department is trying to cut costs by tightening the screws on the reconstruction design, perhaps even to its detriment.
“We go through a process with all the user groups headed by a steering committee of some of the major stakeholders in the school district and the borough. That’s going to determine where we’re going to land,” Hedges said. “We go through months and months of process of developing that. We squeeze that down, try to minimize that as best we can. We did a really good job of scrutinizing that with this school, to the point that even in the end I was a little concerned about how much we squeezed the general population classrooms. The general student classroom seemed like we may have made them a little too small for future needs should that school for some reason get an influx of new kids.”
When the public was offered the opportunity to comment on meeting topics discussed up to that point, local figure and talk-show host, Duane Bannock questioned the necessity of a reconstructed building in the first place.
“I’ll ask the borough to reconsider the value of building a new school as the only option for the district identified number one priority, especially when just a few blocks away there is an empty 84,000 square foot building. It’s borough owned. It’s a school that was mothballed due to declining enrollment.”
The Soldotna Elementary reconstruction project is part of the $65.5 million dollar bond package passed last year. The project’s initial cost estimate was $21.5 million, but has since increased to $35 million, a matter which was initially brought to public knowledge following the Board of Education meeting earlier this month.
