Springdale school chief calls new rules wasteful
Posted on Friday, September 28, 2007
SPRINGDALE — School administrators warned lawmakers Thursday that facility standards intended to create equity statewide will end up costing the state millions of dollars in unnecessary building space.
Springdale Superintendent Jim Rollins showed off his district’s new Willis D. Shaw Elementary School to visiting legislators, pointing out that the seemingly spacious brick building wouldn’t have met new state size standards.
Regulations that would require classrooms and other existing facilities to be slightly larger would add about 2, 000 square feet to the building’s existing 85, 000-square-foot size. With that, Rollins said, he doesn’t quibble.
But he has a problem with a per-student size standard that would require another 16, 000 square feet.
“Where would you have us put the square footage ? We’ve met every standard you’ve asked us to meet,” Rollins said.
So far, no one in state government can justify that extra requirement to Rollins’ satisfaction, and he’s not the only superintendent with similar concerns.
The per-student size requirement came as part of the Legislature’s ongoing response to the 2002 Arkansas Supreme Court ruling that declared the state’s school-funding system unconstitutional. Among other problems, the court found in the long-running Lake View case that the state hadn’t offered schoolchildren adequate and eq- uitable facilities statewide.
After years of studying the matter, the Legislature this year set aside $ 631 million to help local districts build schools. According to a property wealth index the Legislature devised, 36 percent of the Springdale district’s future building costs will paid by the state.
But to get the funding, the district has to build to the minimum size of 125 square feet per student for an elementary school. With its 820-student capacity, Shaw would have about 104 square feet per student.
Making up the difference on the district’s next elementary school would add about $ 2 million to the cost, Rollins said.
“That virtually negates the state partnership with us,” he said. “In my mind, that is not the level of efficiency you want, or the local districts want.”
Sen. Shane Broadway, D-Bryant, chairman of the Academic Facilities Oversight Committee, said he understood the frustration but lawmakers have to be careful to ensure that schools are built to the same minimum standards statewide. Otherwise, the state could end up in trouble with the Supreme Court again.
“You don’t want to end up back in a disparity situation.... In the past, districts made the decisions about what they wanted to build,” Broadway said. “That’s what got us into Lake View.”
He said the task force that studied facilities across the state and nation came up with the figure in part to allow districts the wiggle room to design buildings that would meet the needs of unique academic programs, hopefully for now and in the future.
Doug Eaton, director of the Arkansas Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation, said he’s wrestling with whether the perstudent size requirements are too high. Many districts think they’re too low, he said.
But he said setting a minimum standard is the only way to have equity in the state’s participation. That way, the state shares in costs based on the same exact building standards.
In Springdale’s case, the square-footage requirement is higher than the total space needed to meet the academic program the district set up.
Sen. Dave Bisbee, R-Rogers, said it doesn’t make sense that a district can meet the state’s size requirements for the individual components of a building — classrooms, a cafeteria, bathrooms, a gymnasium — and still have to add millions of dollars to the price to build extra space.
“Do you know of any other formula in the world where the sum of the parts don’t equal the total ?” he asked.
Tom Kimbrell, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, said that frustrates superintendents. If a district has designed the space required to deliver an adequate academic program that the state requires, adding on makes no sense, he said.
Eaton said he’s explained to Springdale administrators how they can build the extra 16, 000 square feet on the next elementary school, leaving areas that can be used as academic standards and curriculum requirements change.
“Folks, we’ve got one shot to build a school. Let’s build a school to serve our needs into the future,” he said in an interview. “If they build schools to standards we’re setting now, they’ll have space and flexibility.”
Springdale assistant superintendent Ron Bradshaw said it’s ridiculous to try to make such projections.
“We’re very conservative. We take pride in how efficient we are,” he said. “We don’t try to build stuff we don’t need.”
Rollins invited members of the House and Senate Education committees and the Facilities committee to take a look around Shaw Elementary.
“If we can’t educate an elementary child in this school building, I don’t believe we have that ability to get it done,” Rollins said. “In my view, very clearly, this is an adequate school.”
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
