March 29, 2024

Caged-in Complex

The Berg replacement will be costly, but necessary, board president says

Image 1 of 3

One morning, within the next few years, Newton Community School District students will attend either a renovated or re-built B.C. Berg Complex.

Most Newton residents seem fairly certain the district cannot continue to simply repair and refurbish the 51-year-old building, but how much of the bill will Newton property owners pay for either a complete re-build or a thorough renovation?

The district’s board voted last week to pursue an option for a bond issue on an all new building for the elementary/middle-school complex, which would be built next to the current structure. While all of the financing details haven’t been worked out, it will be an expensive replacement, with an initial estimate of more than $30 million.

The district, under one proposed plan, could get a loan called Secure an Advanced Vision for Education for $18.4 million, which means the board will still have to go to the voters for the $16.6 million balance.

The district will need voters to accept a rise in property taxes to help pay for the bond. A general obligation bond requires a 60 percent approval from voters in order to pass.

Board president Sheri Benson sat down with the Daily News to describe some of the challenges and important aspects of a redoing one of the district’s most versatile campuses.

At the Jan. 12 meeting, during a discussion about when the board could take the bond to the public in a special election, board secretary Gayle Isaac said aiming for a Sept. 8 vote on a bond issue for Berg would be “very, very aggressive.”

The next available date would be in Feb. 2, 2016. Benson doesn’t want to campaign for 13 months for the bond issue, with the Berg complex aging further all the while.

She wants to shoot for Sept. 8 — even with it being an election the day after Labor Day, and even though the board seats currently held by Bill Perrenoud and Donna Cook will be up for election that day as well.

“I think September is a good fit,” Benson said. “We’ll have a larger group of voters already at the polls, and some who are on the fence about voting at all might vote in favor of it.”

Benson was on the board in 2010 when the board voted to close the Emerson Hough building and reconfigure grade levels in the district’s other elementary schools.

The Emerson Hough building was redesignated at the Jan. 12 meeting as an “educational facility,” presumably because it will become a regular elementary school again in 2016-17. The re-opening of Emerson Hough, along with the purchase and planned renovation of the former Hy-Vee building on West First Avenue, allows the district to reconfigure, which it has discussed doing for about a year.

“2010 was so different,” Benson said. “So much of that talk was about a budget crunch. This time, there are a lot more concepts in play.”

Class sizes has been a major topic of discussion, especially in the K-3 category. However, several teacher and parent surveys and open forums have not left a clear picture of how much difference there is to Newtonians between 18 students in a K-3 classroom versus 21.

It would be a big step forward if the board took a vote on concrete reconfiguration proposals at next Monday’s meeting. However, if there isn’t a vote then, expect one to happen soon, Benson said.

“We have to know what we’re looking for,” she said. “It’s a jigsaw puzzle, and our priorities are a major component.”

All of the reconfiguration proposals detailed so far put the entire district’s grades 5 and 6 at Berg Elementary, and grades 7 and 8 unchanged at Berg Middle School. Benson said it’s important to have four fairly large grade levels at the complex, because voters would then be likely to have some type of personal connection to the facility.

“That would be a lot of people that would have a connection to Berg,” Benson said. “This bond vote will have a lot of ‘How will this impact me?,’ and we need a maximum buy-in.”

Newton Superintendent Bob Callaghan said many school administrators operate under this guideline: If a renovation costs more than 50 percent of a new build, it’s better to build new and get all the warranties and modern technology.

Callaghan has also said the price tag doesn’t need to be so high. State law requires ballot verbiage to be completed 46 days before an election, so the board still has time “whittle down” the Berg project, to cut out or scale back features that the public doesn’t support.

Benson said it’s possible that a passed bond issue would only raise property taxes about $1.50 per $1,000 of property value — or a $150 annual tax increase on a $100,000 home. Benson said younger teachers can look around Iowa and surrounding states and see new facilities everywhere.

“It’s what they expect to see,” she said. “Millennials think very differently from Baby Boomers or the Greatest Generation.”

Benson said classroom size and availability might be less and less contentious in the future, especially in the upper grades.

“We might see a point, especially at the high school level, where classrooms, as we know them, might start to go away,” she said. “And we need to look at replacing other buildings like Woodrow Wilson (Elementary) in the next several years, and possibly the high school, in about 10 years. Replacing Berg, while pricey, is really just a large repair bill.”

Callaghan said a new boiler at Berg, purchased in August 2012, cost the district approximately $75,000, but that boiler could be moved to another campus in the district, if necessary.

The gas usage at the Berg complex was 72,000 BTUs in the 2011-12 school year $45,000; increasing to 92,800 BTUs and $55,000 in 2012-13 and 96,500 BTUs and $66,000 last year. The bill for December 2014 alone was $10,500.

Benson said the strong leaders and achievers Newton High School graduates have become through the years are a testament to the solid academic foundation students get before reaching high school.

“If there’s a solid foundation at K through 8, great things happen in grades 9 through 12.”

Contact Jason W. Brooks at 641-792-3121 ext. 6532 or jbrooks@newtondailynews.com