Costs Associated With High School Renovation Slowly Coming into Focus

Taxpayers are now getting a a slightly better idea of the costs involved with proposed renovations to State College High School.

At last night’s meeting of the State College school board, Assistant Business Administrator Donna Watson gave projections for financing  the high school project. Potential tax increases of 1.7 percent and 3.02 percent were used as examples for the projections. The average school district tax increase for the past ten years has been 3.02 percent.

Board member Jim Pawelczyk says it’s important for taxpayers to start getting information about the what the new high school might cost them.

“We’ve had consistent tax increases every year,” Pawelczyk says. “This year we will reach historical highs in what the district is paying for pensions. It’s only gonna go up from here.”

The board also heard a report on design options for the facility.

John Beddia, is director of operations at Crabtree, Rohrbaugh and Associates, the architecture firm the school district hired. He says his team is now primarily focused on estimating costs for the high school project.

Beddia says more detailed drawings of the school will be available soon for those purposes. The board is now looking at differences between two proposed renovation plans for the high school, with one redesign plan having a westward expansion of the south building, while option two is more of a crescent shape.

“We need to begin developing an outline or written narrative to perhaps fill in the gaps … to provide enough information to substantiate cost,” Beddia says.

“We’re refining not only our design schedule but our construction schedule,” Beddia says. “As the design becomes further developed we can see other ideas coming together.”

Beddia reminded everyone again that the plans have yet to be set in stone for the school.

“There is a tremendous amount of design work to occur,” Beddia says. “We haven’t even gone into individual spaces yet.”

Director of the school district’s Office of Physical Plant Ed Poprik says he expects that the board will chose one of the two options at its next meeting on Dec. 2.