I was having dinner with a friend last night, when the subject of the cost of rebuilding Treasure Mountain Junior High (TMJH) came up. She said, “What’s the estimated cost to rebuild Treasure Mountain?” I said, “$26 million.” She said… “$26 million? For 2 grades? TWO GRADES?!?!”

I hadn’t thought of it that way.

This morning I was trying to figure out how much per square foot it costs to build an elementary school. The best study I found was out of Texas. They noted that costs vary by region but they’ve attempted to account for that. It seems that the average cost per square foot for an elementary school in Texas (as of 2103) was $149. Ours is much higher than that.

Yet, there’s a much more interesting point I believe. In the Texas study, they calculate the cost per student of building an elementary school at capacity. That number is $17,461 per student. Now let’s take our school district’s number of $26.2 million in costs to build a new TMJH and divide it by the number of students in 5th and 6th grade during 2014-2015 (773 students). I would assume we wouldn’t want to build the school with too much extra capacity in order to make sure that open enrollment doesn’t impact us too much. Given that, the cost per student served is $33,893.

Those costs are 94% higher per student than in Texas. I know we want The Best Schools in America™, but are our schools going to be 100% better than those in Texas?

Money. It’s a funny thing. It’s easy to spend it when it’s someone else’s … but a little bit harder when it’s your own.

That’s what I started thinking when I began to read meeting minutes from the Park City School District Master Planning Committee. As many of us know, this committee has been meeting for almost a year to determine whether to tear down Treasure Mountain Junior High (TMJH) and what renovations should be made to the Kearns Campus.

The last I had heard (from the committee) was that rebuilding the 5th/6th school would cost about $26.2 million.  That seemed like a lot of money but I understand that construction is expensive. Yet, I came across Meeting Minutes from the same committee from April 29th, 2015. The minutes state that VCBO (the planning company hired for this process) employee, Breanna Bonsavage, “said that to build a new elementary, the timeline would be 13 or 14 months to completion. New construction building costs are $161 per square foot. The cost for a 5-6 building would be approximately $14M.” The minutes continue on to say, “Moe [Hickey] said that the Board could approve the building of a 5-6 now, because it would not have to be part of the bond.”

$14 million? The difference between $14 million (as stated at the end of April) and $26 million (as stated in middle June) is $12 million dollars. That’s 80% more cost in a month and a half. Will it be $38 million by the time they decide to go to bond?

So, what’s going on?

Perhaps the $14 million number didn’t include “accessories” like window shades and carpet. Yet, $12 million buys a lot of carpet. Perhaps they are planning on getting new desks, lockers, computers, etc. Maybe we should try to reuse some of those things? Perhaps, Ms. Bonsavage was quoting actual costs while our new estimates are based on … something else?

My concern stems back to a March 2015 meeting of the School’s Master Planning Committee where the School District’s Facilities Manager, Todd Hanson, asked VCBO about costs. The exchange went something like this:

Todd Hansen (to VCBO Planning Group): Hey guys, the cost for building right now is about…what… a hundred…?

VCBO: $160 to $180 [per square foot]

Todd Hansen: [So] $180 to $160 depending on how elaborate you get.

VCBO: It depends on the economy. We are not back up ’07. It might be by the time you all do this.

Todd Hansen: The Longer we wait the more expensive the money is.

VCBO: If I was going to do it we’d calculate for a bond election at $250.

So, is the real cost of construction in the $160 range but they’ve calculated it at $250? Or is something else going on?

It’s just another in a long line of questions about plans and process that need to be answered before public funds are used for the rebuilding of Treasure Mountain Junior High (or any other development on the school’s Kearns campus).

It looks like Park City School District will be undergoing some pretty serious changes in the near future. Park City has grown over the years, and the larger class sizes, along with various other problems in the district, are prompting a grade realignment and construction. All-day kindergarten will be added to the elementary schools in the fall of 2016. The other changes being proposed include a new school for 5th and 6th graders on the Ecker Hill campus, tearing down Treasure Mountain Junior High, and adding a 9th grade wing onto the existing high school at Kearns, all by the fall of 2017. So far, I think the drafts for the realignment are looking good and will address the district’s current and future problems. However, all growth comes with a few growing pains, and Parkites may just have to deal with some temporary uncomfortableness to get the end result.

For those living in town, the new layout means that fifth graders will have to take a longer bus ride to get to the Ecker campus than they would to get to their local elementary school. At the master planning community meeting on July 6th, it was reported that some parents are concerned about their fifth graders riding the bus longer. I personally find this to be a small sacrifice to make. Students currently take the bus to Ecker starting in sixth grade, so they’ll just have to make the adjustment one year earlier. In a spread out town like Park City, you just can’t be close to everything. People living in Park Meadows and nearby neighborhoods may not be close to Ecker Hill, but they are close to plenty of other important locations. Students in Jeremy Ranch, Pinebrook, and Summit Park, who aren’t close to anything, know all about long bus rides.

According to documents presented at the July 6th meeting, it looks like all-day kindergarten will be implemented before the 5th/6th school is completed. So where would the fifth graders go? Mostly likely, portable classrooms will be needed. It’s unclear to me whether portables will be used at the high school while the ninth grade wing is being added, but it may be a possibility as well. Obviously, no one wants to be in portables, but it’s something that just has to be dealt with. A year or so of portable classrooms is worth it if you can attend a brand new school the year after. Besides, many other schools around the country use portables on a more long-term basis. If they can do it long term, we can stick it out short term.

Unfortunately, the class of 2017, myself included, will be stuck with the short straw. We’ll be around for the construction, but we’ll have graduated by the time the new facilities are completed. And where exactly will we graduate? The new ninth grade wing will most likely be located where Dozier Field currently is, and the new field may not be completed in time for our graduation. It means a lot to us to be able to graduate somewhere that holds high school memories, and it’s disappointing that we’ll never see any benefits from the renovations. We may not like it, but as long as graduation isn’t held in Salt Lake City, I think we’ll be okay.

I really think the plans for the district-wide renovations look great. We’ll all just have to make a few small sacrifices to get to the final result. You have to give a little, to gain a lot. (Sorry class of 2017.)

Last week I tried to attend the Park City School Board’s Master Planning Committee meeting. This committee is addressing the issue of moving the 5th/6th grade school to Ecker Hill and redesigning the Kearns Campus. Much to my surprise I was told “there is no meeting.” The receptionist then called someone who asked “who wanted to know?”… and when I told her, she repeated the fact that there was no meeting. Later I found out that they switched the meeting to an “Executive Meeting” and it was closed to the public. Funny. I have attended meetings since January and I can’t recall a closed meeting.

This morning, on KPCW, School Superintendent Dr Ember Conley said there was another “closed” Executive Meeting tonight.

My question is, what’s with all the secrecy? The problem is, we are about a month from the School Board decision to vote for a bond to build a new school and redesign a campus. The public has a fundamental right to know how our local government makes their decisions. This is a topic that will impact our entire community and to have to two closed door meetings in a week right before they make a recommendation to the school board, at best does us a disservice and at worst makes citizens wonder what is really going on.

You may say, “many of our government’s entities have non-public meetings.” That is true, but they are only allowed by Utah State Law for very specific reasons like personnel, litigation, and buying property. In fact the Open Meetings Act states:

The point is that our School Board and its committees exist to conduct the public’s business. They serve us, the citizens. There are only a few legitimate reasons why a meeting should be closed and one of them isn’t to try to decide how to clean up the mess they have made with regard to this process.

It’s true that this committee’s LEGAL requirement to follow the Open Meetings act is in a little bit of a grey area, since it is a committee with less than a quorum of School Board members on it. That said, the SPIRIT of the law would dictate that this group should discuss OPENLY all decisions that it will ultimately recommend to the School Board.

If the committee doesn’t discuss these matters openly, it makes me wonder what they don’t want the public to know.

I’ll be live blogging Wednesday’s Master Planning Committee meeting, starting at 4PM (unless they decide to “close” the meeting like last week). This is an important meeting because this is the first chance to see if the committee has decided to alter course on building plans on the Kearns campus, due to neighborhood pushback.

If you can’t attend the meeting in person, I hope you’ll bookmark this page and come back Wednesday afternoon.

I was listening to KPCW this morning and a Park City Municipal representative was talking about a group they are putting together to provide feedback on how to best use public property near Lower Park Avenue. KPCW’s Leslie Thatcher asked about how much participants are being paid. The answer, for 3 days work, was $1500. That would be $500 a day. Not bad work, if you can get.

That reminded me of an email I received a few weeks back from a substitute teacher. I had been writing about teacher contracts and this teacher chimed in to ask if I knew how much substitutes got paid. I know that Park City’s teachers are the highest paid in the state (on average), so I assumed they must be doing OK. What I found was shocking. You make more as an entry level worker at Five Guys Burgers than you do as a substitute teacher. What does a Park City substitute get per day? $85. That’s $10.62 an hour.

Let’s contrast that with one of the highest paid Park City teachers who annual compensation is $125,000 per year (per the Transparent website). There are approximately 180 school days in the year. That works out to about $85 per hour. So, is the most well paid teacher worth 8 times what a substitute is? From a citizen perspective, I would think that a substitute teacher has a pretty tough job. They have to come into an environment that is unknown, teach someone else’s material, and keep things under control. Do some substitutes view it as glorified babysitting? I’m sure some do, especially when they are being paid like it.

The argument could be made that a regular teacher has a long-term impact on each of their students, so they should be paid more. That makes sense. You could also argue that I shouldn’t base an estimate on the highest paid teachers. Well, if we take a starting teacher at $40,000 per year, they are still paid almost $30 an hour (3 time the substitute). You could also argue that perhaps the educational requirements of a substitute aren’t as rigorous as a full-time teacher. That’s true too, per Utah State law.

I’m sure there are countless other arguments that could be made.

Still, as I come back to it, $10 an hour just seems low in comparison to full-time teacher salaries. I’ve heard School Superintendent Dr Ember Conley talk about shortages of substitute teacher. Now I see that that’s not so surprising.