State College Area School District administration will recommend a slight slow down of the District-Wide Facilities Master Plan Review (DWFMP) at Monday night’s school board meeting.
The proposed change would move the selection of final project options for four elementary schools to mid-Novemeber instead of late September as the current calendar calls for. The change results from the timing of two Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development grants received by the district that together would provide $3.8 million for potential Houserville and Radio Park elementary school renovation projects.
The grants were initially expected to be received in June, under which the DCED’s required completion date for projected to receive the grants would have been June 2018. To meet that deadline, the district need to follow a highly accelerated design and approval phase of nine to 10 months, followed by a construction schedule of 12 months.
But the grants were not awarded to the district until July 1, the start of a new fiscal year, and so the required completion date was shifted to June 2019. Ultimately, the new deadline allows for a more typical 12-month design and approval process and 18-month construction period.
The design team of Crabtree Rohrbaugh & Associates and district administrators are also expected to recommend canceling an Aug. 15 forum at Mount Nittany Elementary School to discuss potential changes at Corl Street, Houserville and Radio Park. Instead, that agenda would move to a Sept. 19 forum at Mount Nittany Middle School and another forum would be scheduled for Oct. 17.
“(The revised calendar) will allow for more information to be developed for the forums, as well as for the options being developed for the Board’s consideration,” Superintendent Bob O’Donnell said in a news release.
The DWFMP is focused on the futures of four district elementary schools — Corl Street, Houserville, Lemont and Radio Park. The review is considering renovations or new construction for Corl Street, Houserville and Radio Park as well as combining Lemont with Houserville and repurposing the Lemont Elementary School Building. Each building dates to the 1950s and has not seen any significant renovations since the 1960s.
Also on the table for Corl Street is potentially closing and repurposing the school building and shifting its students to other schools. District administrators have said that Corl Street presents challenges for expansion, with a small footprint on which to build and a lower student enrollment than other elementary schools. That possibility has been met with concern by residents of the Greentree and Holmes-Foster neighborhood served by the school.
Total project costs for the schools was estimated at $40 million, not including the DCED grants as well more than $2 million in potential funding from PlanCon, the state’s school construction reimbursement program. District Business Administrator Randy Brown previously said the $40 million projection was on the high end and likely to change.
The board will also consider several State High project change orders, as well as a $50,800 drainage swale and bridge repair project for the district bus garage adjacent to Radio Park Elementary.
