Board approves next step in Hampton High School renovation project

Hampton Township School Board approved two firms to work on advancing the second phase of renovations to the high school, a project with an estimated cost of between $30 million and $33.2 million.

On May 13, the board voted 8-1 for DRAW Collective of Mt. Lebanon to perform architectural and engineering services, and by the same vote to award an $899,329 contract to general contractor PJ Dick for preconstruction services. Both firms worked on Phase I of high school renovations.

Board member Larry Vasko, who chairs the finance committee, opposed each of the measures.

“I am for the renovation project, but I am not for the magnitude that has been presented,” he said, citing factors including the impact on taxpayers.

The district’s 2024-25 proposed final budget calls, as approved by the board on May 6, for a 5.3% increase in the real estate tax rate, bringing it to 23 mills. A vote on adopting the final budget is scheduled for June 10.

“I think I would feel better if we could push out, like, a parent survey and see what the parents want,” Vasko said about the high school project, with questions such as “How much tax do you want? What improvements do you want?”

Key aspects of Phase II include emphasizing career readiness for students, providing flexibility and opportunities for collaboration in available spaces, and bringing areas such as the auditorium, cafeteria and kitchen more in line with 21st-century standards.

Board member Matt Jarrell pointed out that renovating the high school is not a new concept.

“This plan is years old,” he said. “Stakeholders had all kinds of opportunities to contribute substantially to it back when it was developed.”

He addressed the impact of real estate taxes on the district’s revenue stream.

“I’ve made the point before that we have all of these fixed costs, and that is the only way we can continue to fund our excellence, or even our adequacies to the extent we’re not excellent,” Jarell said. “As we discussed for years, even before I was on the board, that will have to happen periodically when you have construction phases that need to be done.”

The Phase II cost estimate stems from numbers compiled by PJ Dick in 2020, with adjustments for inflation.

“It’s a guess,” Cassandra Renninger, DRAW Collective principal and head of the firm’s education design studio, acknowledged. “You should be prepared to see numbers like that, but I wouldn’t say that those numbers have a high degree of accuracy to them. They’re in the ballpark.

“The more accurate numbers would come at the end of design development,” she told the board.

Renninger provided details about further capital improvement projects under consideration by the school district over the next several years, as per recommendations in a 2019 facilities study. Among the items presented, along with estimates based on current costs of applicable products and services:

• Replacing unit ventilators, which provide heat and ventilation, and a boiler at Wyland Elementary School, $4.7 million to $5.6 million. Renninger recommended the district apply for a state Public School Facility Improvement Grant toward the project.

• Middle school unit ventilator replacement, $900,000 to $950,000.

• Paving the Hampton Middle School bus loop and parking area, along with the parking lots at the neighboring administrative building and across Topnick Drive at Fridley Field, $330,000 to $450,000.

Superintendent Michael Loughead said he and Jeff Kline, the district’s director of administrative services/transportation, have talked with Hampton Township officials about the project.

“They have agreed to work with us when they bid their paving to allow us to go along with them as an alternate,” Loughead said. “They’re very amenable to that.”

• Replacement of exterior lighting at the middle school, central administration and Wyland, total of between $245,000 and $270,000.

“The typical payback for LED replacement is somewhere in the six- to 10-year window,” Renninger said about the switch to more energy-efficient illumination.

• Replacing Fridley Field’s athletic lighting, $350,000 to $385,000.

Newer items identified by the district for capital improvement list include:

• Middle school boiler plant upgrades, $850,000 to $890,000. The project has a “five- to seven-year priority,” according to Renninger.

• Unit ventilator replacement in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms at Central Elementary School, $620,000 to $650,000. Renninger said the replacement could occur in stages rather than all at once.

• Concrete sidewalk repair and replacement at Wyland, $130,000 to $150,000 .

• Middle school gym floor refinishing, $35,000 to $45,000. Plans call for the project to take place in July.

• Middle school roof replacement, $1.9 million to $2.4 million. The school board approved a resolution to apply for a Public School Facility Improvement Grant that would cover the cost.

“If the funding comes in, then that project can proceed sooner,” Renninger said. “But if it doesn’t come in, the roof really has three to five years of additional life left in it.”

Loughead said about the overall condition of district facilities:

“In a review that was recently done, there’s nothing imminently failing that we’re aware of or could potentially be failing that we’re not prepared for in the terms of the next three to five years.”