March 28, 2024

District looks at 4 options for school building reconfigurations

Study shows Emerson Hough should reopen as elementary school

There are four possible scenarios for future building configurations in the Newton Community School District. While all of the plans vary, there was one common trait — reopening Emerson Hough as an elementary school.

Dave Briden —  a senior architect at FRK Architects and Engineers, who has previously worked on projects involving every district facility —  presented these scenarios to the board of education during a special work session on Wednesday, that attracted a curious audience of teachers and parents.

In every one of the four scenarios, Berg Middle School and Newton Senior High School remain untouched, while the other buildings go through a number of different configurations.

According to Briden, the district is nearly maxed out on classroom capacity. Briden made this statement based upon his firm’s study of the district’s current building layout, figures gathered from the recent demographic study conducted by RSP & Associates — which projected future enrollment numbers — and parents and teachers desired classroom sizes.

Briden said that they found RSP’s figures to be “extremely accurate,” and Superintendent Bob Callaghan said that the firm’s history shows its projections to be 97 percent accurate.

In its study, which was conducted during the 2013-2014 school year, RSP projected enrollment figures from SY 14 to SY 19.

“The projected enrollment exceeds your capacity. You’re pretty much over (capacity) everywhere except your 7-8 (Berg Middle School),” Briden said.

RSP concluded that enrollment will increase in the next five years; the bulk of enrollment will be at the elementary level; enrollment seems to be equally distributed among grades; enrollment tends to increase most in the elementary levels, but decrease in the secondary level; there is a need for more middle school capacity and there is a need for more elementary capacity.

Under the current configuration, the low-end for K-8 grade capacity is 1,878 students, ideal is 1,992 and the high-end is 2,106, Briden said.

Scenario 1

In this scenario, Emerson Hough would turn into a K-3 grade facility, the Pre-K program would move into Thomas Jefferson Elementary School and the remaining elementary buildings would remain as is.

Briden said this scenario would lead to issues down the line for the 4-6 grade buildings, Aurora Heights and Woodrow Wilson elementary schools, as far as classroom capacity goes.

“When we look at those numbers, what you can see is by reintroducing Emerson Hough as an attendance center in the district, it takes care of the K-3 portion of the district, and that’s with Pre-K at Thomas Jefferson. As you can see, the 4-6 is still an issue as we didn’t do anything to those buildings” Briden said.

For Aurora Heights and Woodrow,  the ideal student population would be 660 combined and maximum would be 720. Under this model, the capacity could reach 716 by SY19, which far exceeds the ideal figure.

Scenario 2

In this scenario, there is no home for the district’s Pre-K program, which is currently housed at Emerson Hough. Instead, Emerson Hough would become a K-3 grade building, Aurora Heights would become a K-3 grade building, Thomas Jefferson would remain a K-3 grade building, and Woodrow Wilson and Berg Elementary School would serve as the 4-6 grade buildings.

“This appears to be under utilizing your space, because the number is so much higher in your capacity than what your enrollment is projected to be — you’re going to have a lot of empty rooms,” Briden said.

Other issues with this scenario are finding a location for the Pre-K program, and that one of three lower elementary buildings would have to be designated as a “splitter school.” This would mean students wouldn’t attend the closest 4-6 grade building to them, but instead be assigned to either Berg or Woodrow Wilson.

Scenario 3

In this scenario, Berg Elementary would become a 5-6 grade building, and Emerson Hough, Thomas Jefferson, Aurora Heights and Woodrow Wilson are redesignated into K-4 grade buildings. The Pre-K program would then be evenly dispersed  into those K-4 grade facilities.

“That creates a problem at the kindergarten level. Those Pre-K rooms reduce your capacity in kindergarten, so we can’t meet the capacity there,” Briden said.

Scenario 4

In this scenario, there is no home for the Pre-K program, all of the elementary schools, including Emerson Hough, would become K-4 grade buildings and the Berg Complex would house 5-8 grade students.

“This one probably, in our mind, has better utilization of your space. We have then essentially neighborhood schools,” Briden said.

Next Step

During the presentation, more than a few board members asked Callaghan and Briden, “what will happen to all the programs that are at Emerson Hough?

Emerson Hough currently houses the central and business offices, a branch of the Heartland Area Education Agency, the Pre-K program, Drake HeadStart,  Basics and Beyond Alternative School and the district’s recently launched Disciplinary Alternative Program.

“Basically, this facility supports six facilities and it’s being underused,” Callaghan said.

Callaghan said it would take around 20,000 square feet to relocate all of those entities, and that he could have his office anywhere.

He also reassured the board, that if it went with one of the four scenarios down the line, they would find a home for all of the displaced programs, and that none of them would be eliminated. Callaghan added no pre-planning has been done on future locations for those entities.

“We want all of them to continue, we will not change,” Callaghan said.

Board member Bill Perrenoud asked Briden about cost on implementing any of the four proposals.

Briden said it would be minimal in comparison to trying to add on to existing properties or building a new small-scale facility tailored to Pre-K and Kindergarten students as another board member suggested. Callaghan chimed in that the district was two years away from paying off a past bond, and that they would use physical plant and equipment levy to pay for any potential reconfiguration costs.

Just about every board member posed various building scenario questions to Callaghan and Briden, however, none of them really gave any indication as to which scenario they would prefer.

“We have a lot to think about,” said Andy Elbert, board president.

The next regularly scheduled board meeting is Sept. 22 and the board voted to set a closed meeting work session on Sept. 29 to discuss “real estate.”

Contact Senior Staff Writer Ty Rushing at (641) 792-3121 ext. 6532 or at trushing@newtondailynews.com.