Sun Shines on K-12 School Construction

Three Florida School Districts Continue Aggressive Building Program

School districts in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Orange counties aim to keep up with facilities needs.

By Debra Wood

More youngsters needing an education, Florida's 2002 law limiting class size and a desire to decrease reliance on portables and upgrade aging facilities have created demand for new and replacement schools, additions and renovations.

Three of the most active districts - Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Orange counties - have taken different approaches to keep their capital improvement plans within budget as construction costs skyrocket.

Miami-Dade

Miami-Dade County Public Schools began its first-ever comprehensive capital plan a year ago. The $3.7 billion plan aims to relieve crowding, meet the state class-size mandate, bring existing facilities into good repair and provide educational enhancements. It includes buying and preparing 18 sites, constructing more than 40 schools and 30 additions, and renovating nearly every school in the district. Primarily by using modular construction to build additions to existing schools, the district opened 18,000 new student stations in 2005 and added 20,000 student stations for 2006.

The district awarded construction contracts totaling $800 million in the first 10 months of the fiscal year that ended June 30. Also, a master plan was recently completed for an $83 million historic renovation of Miami Senior High School, built in 1927.

Last year, the district hired four architectural firms to design adaptable, expandable, prototype schools for early childhood, elementary, middle and K-8 facilities.

"Each architect was given three sites to do three buildings," said Rose Diamond, chief facilities officer for Miami-Dade schools. "I needed to see these were truly adaptable."

Miami-Dade schools tapped four construction managers to build three schools, each with the same design and standardized specs. John B. Pirtle Construction Co. of Davie, Fla., received the contract for the K-8 schools; Jasco Construction Co. of Miami the early childhood centers; Suffolk Construction Co. of West Palm Beach, the elementary schools; and Coastal Construction Co. of Miami the middle schools.

Diamond views the prototypes as key to keeping construction costs down.

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With land growing scarcer, Miami-Dade has embarked on some creative retrofitting, such as converting a former discount store into a middle school, and leasing and completely overhauling a three-story office building in Little Havana for a Young Women's Academy, which is scheduled for completion this summer.

"There is not a single building type that cannot somehow be compatible with a school," said Diamond, who envisions placing early childhood centers or small high schools on the ground floor of condominium or commercial high-rise buildings. The district also aims to partner with cities, colleges and other entities to share facilities or locations.

Palm Beach

Farther up the East Coast, the School District of Palm Beach County launched a five-year plan and capital budget earlier this year, after Palm Beach County voters approved a half-cent sales tax in November 2004. The district expects the tax to raise $560 million during its six-year existence.

For the past few years, the number of pupils in Palm Beach County grew by about 5,000 annually.

Joseph M. Sanches, chief of facilities management for Palm Beach schools, anticipates a slight decline again next year. The district's capital plan aims to decrease the use of portables and achieve smaller class sizes as mandated statewide by voters.

Palm Beach schools will open two new schools and nine replacement schools this summer and complete 13 major additions. Next year, Palm Beach plans to open a new elementary school and middle school and three replacement elementary schools. It will complete 11 major additions.

The district spent $161 million on construction for the year ending June 30 and anticipates spending $630 million in 2007. Sanches said construction costs have increased 50 percent in the last two years.

As in Miami-Dade, the Palm Beach school district relies on prototype designs to shave architecture and construction costs. Sanches also looks to smaller sites, vertical construction and innovation, such as waterless urinals and shrinking media centers that have more technology and fewer books.

"The last thing we want to do is cheapen the buildings," Sanches said. "People have to realize if we don't want to lesson the quality, the only thing you can do is right-size, so we're not paying for space we don't need."

Orange County

In Central Florida, Orange County voters also passed a half-cent sales-tax referendum, in 2002, to build new schools and renovate or replace existing facilities. More than 5,000 new pupils enter the school system annually.

After the referendum's passage, the school district completed a master plan for the first 78 projects, ranking their importance based on age and current condition of the facilities as well as crowding. It came up with 25 new schools. In addition, the district estimates it needs about 31 new schools to meet the state's class-size mandate.

In May, Orange County Public Schools had 46 active major projects, 22 under construction, nine in design and 15 in planning. It will open nine new schools, one replacement and seven renovation projects in time for the 2006-2007 school year. It plans to open 15 schools in 2007 and nine in 2008.

The district's 2006-2010 building budget totals $952.9 million, with two-thirds of the money coming from the sales tax and 3 percent from state class-size funds. The existing plan includes renovating or replacing 136 schools and building 50 new and relief schools.

Rising material and labor costs have forced the district to re-evaluate its master plan. For instance, the district is phasing out use of ninth-grade centers, so those buildings will be demolished rather than renovated. It aims to present a revised plan to the school board in July.

"We're reviewing the scope of all projects, and if there is something high cost and low value, it's gone," said Pat Herron, chief facilities officer for Orange County schools.

As in the other districts, Orange County makes use of prototype school designs. In overcrowded, older schools, it has begun completing additions at the same time as renovations.

The district is housing students in schools being renovated in new swing schools, saving up to $1 million on portables per project. The swing school buildings may be used as temporary facilities for more than one rebuilding project in the years before they open as permanent facilities.

In response to increasing costs and scarce vacant land, more Orange schools will go vertical, to save on land-acquisition costs. Herron has staff members monitoring the building materials market and actively substituting products, such as using asphalt instead of concrete for parking lots or driveways, using steel pipe instead of PVC for sprinkler systems or vice versa.

"[We do] anything we can do to get a quality building, but we use materials less affected by cost increases," Herron said.

All three districts hope for additional funding from the state to reflect increasing building costs and support construction needs generated by the class-size amendment.

Useful sources:

Miami-Dade County Public Schools Facilities
http://facilities.dadeschools.net/

School District of Palm Beach County Facilities Management
http://cms.palmbeach.k12.fl.us/cms/

Orange County Public Schools Construction Progress
http://www.schoolprojects.ocps.net/