By VICKI URBANIK

The Duneland School Corp. needs to build a sixth elementary school, renovate Liberty Intermediate School to accommodate new support programs and embark on a major technology upgrade in all the schools.

Those are the main recommendations that will be presented to the Duneland School Board in June from a school building committee that met for the fifth and final time on Thursday.

By consensus, the approximately 20 members of the Duneland Key Communicator Committee attending Thursday’s meeting agreed with the main conclusions presented by consultant Robert Boyd, who has been guiding the committee’s process of studying school space needs.

Included in those recommendations was the finding that the space issues faced by the Duneland Schools can be most economically addressed by building a sixth elementary school. “That is the number one short-term need of the DSC,” Boyd’s draft statement read.

Boyd will now prepare a final report, which is expected to be presented to the school board on June 2. In the meantime, this Monday, the school board is expected to act on a land acquisition.

The committee will not recommend where exactly the new school should be built, but the consensus seemed to be that the new school should be located more in the southern portion of the Duneland Schools than in the northern end. The committee also agreed that Duneland should designate three elementary schools for each intermediate school and that the new school should be in the Liberty Intermediate School district.

Of all the schools, LIS is the one with the most available space, with a functional capacity at just 68 percent, far lower than at the other schools.

Other recommendations are expected to include:

•LIS should be remodeled and redesigned to accommodate additional students from the new elementary school and also for additional support services. Possibilities include moving Head Start and the Duneland YMCA’s day care program to LIS. Moving Head Start to LIS would free up three class rooms at Westchester Intermediate (which is also having space problems at 98 percent functional capacity), while moving the Y day care would free up space at Chesterton Middle School (which is now at 95 percent functional capacity).

•Duneland Schools need to continue to assess the space needs at CMS due to projected enrollments that will make the current space problems more acute. However, with the possible exception of gaining space now used by the YMCA day care, no new project is planned at the middle school level.

•Duneland should include in its bond issue for a new elementary school a major technology upgrade for all the schools.

•Duneland should limit, as much as possible, the need to redistrict students from the current school boundaries.

The size of the bond issue to pay for the proposed projects is not yet known.

Based on the comments Thursday, the consensus seemed to be that Duneland School Board would need to bond for the new elementary school, the LIS renovations and the technology upgrades. Duneland Director of Special Services Mark McKibben said the proposed renovations to WIS and CMS -- if the decision is made to move out Head Start and the Duneland YMCA, respectively -- would not be that involved and could be funded through Duneland’s Capital Project Fund.

Convincing the Public

Under the state’s new tax law, H.E.A. 1001, new elementary school projects in excess of $10 million could be subject to a voter referendum, if enough voters request it, rather than the current petition drive process. As they have done at previous meetings, committee members touched on some of the issues that they will face as they try to convince the public that the new school is needed.

One committee member said it would be important for the public to understand that Duneland is in a far better financial shape than most other school systems, due to its relatively low capital debt and high assessed value. Another committee member said many people will probably say that Duneland should just add more classrooms to the existing schools; but as McKibben noted, all but two of the elementary schools are landlocked, with no additional space for expansion. Duneland Assistant Superintendent Monte Moffett suggested that the state’s new tax cap law will mean a cut in property taxes, even with a new bond issue for a new school.

Technology

Included in the committee’s recommendation will be a major technology upgrade for all the schools. Randall Eckley, Duneland Director of Media Services, said many schools, including Duneland, are facing significant technology needs. He noted that only two buildings in the school system -- CMS and CHS -- were built with technology in mind.

Moffett said Indiana is phasing in assessments that eventually will be on-line. But if CHS were to provide all the assessments online now, the school wouldn’t have enough computers. The infrastructure doesn’t exist at the other schools to fully accommodate online assessments that are expected in the coming years, he said. “It’s a very huge, huge need right now,” he said of needed technology upgrades.

McKibben noted that several computer labs now in the schools were built in the 1970s and ‘80s, when technology, and the infrastructure, were far different. He noted that a lot of heat and carbon dioxide is created in some of the rooms, where many kids and many computers are crammed into spaces not designed for such intensive use. And when new technology is secured, “We don’t have any place to plug this stuff in,” he said.

CMS

The recommendation on CMS -- basically, that Duneland needs to keep on eye on the middle school space needs -- prompted some discussion Thursday as committee members explored whether they should make a more specific recommendation, such as for a new or expanded middle school.

Boyd said from his perspective as an outsider, the recommendation for a new elementary school and the upgrades to LIS should suffice for the immediate future. Eventually, perhaps sometime after 2015, Duneland will need to consider a second middle school. He suggested that once the middle school hits an enrollment of 1,200, the school system should begin planning for a new facility. The current CMS enrollment is about 875.

He cautioned, though, that if Duneland does decide one day to have two middle schools, the cost could be high, especially if the decision is made to have the second middle school of the same quality as the current CMS, which enjoys high-school style amenities lacking at many other middle schools.

A question was raised as to whether Duneland should move out the administration center at CMS in order to free up more space. But Eckley noted that since CMS was renovated just a few years ago to include the administration center, it would be difficult to tell the community that those new offices are now going to relocate.

And McKibben and Boyd both emphasized that because of the tax changes in Indiana, state officials will only give approve for school facilities that are directly educationally related. McKibben said there would be “no possible way” that a bond issue for support services, like a new administration center, would be approved.

McKibben also said that Duneland School officials have been in lengthy discussions over relocating the bus barn to larger facility. He said if Duneland were to sell the existing bus facility, the profits from the land sale money would likely pay for a new facility elsewhere.

He also noted that the Duneland School Board last year purchased 26 acres adjacent to the Liberty Schools. He said that land could one day be used for a new middle school.

Posted 5/2/2008