With more than $80 million in projects vying for funding, school board members know they may have to make difficult choices next month.
Nine projects are competing for a spot on the schools’ Capital Improvements Plan, although Board Chair Mary Hynes has said some of the projects may face delays. Last Thursday, board members got a look at another project competing for the tight funds, a $9.5 million addition to Yorktown High School.
The addition would add 31 classrooms to the school, intended to address deteriorating facilities and capacity problems at the school, currently served by four temporary classrooms.
But the addition also serves as the beginning of a near total renovation of the school, which opened as it exists now in 1967. John Hill, one of the architects on the project, told the School Board members at their April 18 meeting that at the end of the renovation, "Yorktown will largely be a new facility," with only the gymnasium and auditorium linking the old school to the new.
The addition would be attached to the west side of the current building, and until construction of the total renovation was completed, would largely be masked by the current entryway to the school.
Yorktown and the other schools competing for this year’s tight CIP budget will find out more about their fate at the next school board meeting, on May 2. At that point, Board Chair Mary Hynes said, the board will see the results of a prioritization process set in motion two months ago.
The process ranks candidates for the CIP, based on issues of capacity, deteriorating facilities and the opportunity to use other schools to address the problem.
<b>PARENTS AND NEIGHBORS</b> of the school said they were pleased about the overall progress of the project, but at the board meeting, Sandi Berenbaum, president of the Yorktown Civic Association, said her organization had taken no official stand on plans for the school.
Neighborhood fears center on a timeline for the full renovation of the school. With construction also planned at Greenbrier Park, next to the high school, neighbors are facing construction for the better part of a decade.
"I think what’s difficult is not having a clear feel for what the timeline is," Berenbaum said this week. "It’s important to keep in mind that this neighborhood is facing many years of construction. It affects school kids, but also the people living close by.
Planning for Yorktown’s addition didn’t start "in earnest until December," said Berenbaum, who is also serving on the local planning committee for the school renovations.
So the neighborhood has coped with many changes in the plans in the last four months. "Each time we’ve shown something to people, it has changed," she said.
The plans presented to the school board were only shown to Berenbaum’s committee a few days before the school board meeting, allowing no time for community input. "It’s the back of the building, so I understand," she said. "But people need time to adjust to things. I think people want to be involved with all parts of the process."
<b>EARLIER THIS YEAR,</b> neighbors of Swanson Middle School asked the school board to remove the school from the list of CIP candidates, due to their dissatisfaction with the design of a planned renovation.
Yorktown’s neighbors were not in that position, Berenbaum said. They understand the need for the project, , and want to see renovations begin at the school.
"Kids from the neighborhood go there, so we want that," she said. But an acrimonious fight over county plans for Greenbrier Park last year may have left some of Yorktown’s neighbors sour on renovations.
Those plans attracted complaints when the neighbors felt that the county parks department was rushing through design without getting neighborhood input on the project.
"We love the neighborhood," Berenbaum said. "We want a good park, we want a good school. But people want to be a part of it."
A community meeting in March left many of the park’s neighbors happier with the planning process, but the park project has yet to come to County Board consideration.
Berenbaum is quick to say that she and her association recognize the difference between county park plans and the school’s renovation. The building level planning committee on which she serves has helped soothe the neighborhood’s jangled nerves.
"You can’t deny the history of what happened last year, so people are hesitant to go ahead without having their questions answered," she said. "We don’t feel marginalized by the schools. But we do want to be seen as having reasons for wanting to be involved."
<b>JOHN DURAN, PTA</b> president at Yorktown, said he felt like the neighborhood concerns had been resolved, and the remaining issues just involved the length of park and school construction.
"At our last PTA meeting, there were vocal people from the neighborhood," he said. "Their push was, we all agree now, and this needs to be done. ‘Let’s come together,’ they said, to push the school board and the county board to get this done faster."
He didn’t feel that neighborhood opposition endangered the project, Duran said, aside from ill will as concrete trucks spent more time in the neighborhood.
Instead, the real danger lay in the CIP prioritization process. "Parents are extremely concerned that Yorktown’s addition will not remain at the top of the priority process," he said.
That could mean pushing construction back, with funding coming in 2002, 2004 and 2006, "resulting in construction not being completed until 2009," Duran said. "This is way too long."
Duran said he knew about the other projects pushing for inclusion on the CIP, and didn’t want to pick any of those to delay. "I don’t have a compromise to offer," he said. "But I know the parents want the design and construction moved earlier in the bond process."