South Junior High School students stay dry under a new roof but too frequently feel the chill of winter when the school's old, rusty boiler malfunctions.
Those were the sort of peculiarities 10 clipboard-toting staff with the DLR Group consulting firm sought Tuesday during the first of dozens of inspections they'll make of Lawrence public schools. DLR, an Overland Park-based firm, is being paid $85,000 by the school board to prepare a facilities master plan that would guide years of school renovation and construction.
"We are building a knowledge base of physical needs," said Don Sandall, a DLR executive brought in from Portland, Ore., to coordinate data collection.
The firm's two-week mission is to catalog the condition of 26 school buildings and a handful of district administrative and service buildings.
Sandall, who has worked as a consultant with 60 school districts, said the cost of fixing every building problem in the Lawrence district would be "astounding." He declined to offer a preliminary cost estimate for Lawrence, but he said a similar district in Longview, Wash., with two high schools, four junior highs and a dozen elementary schools had $120 million in needs.
"That was just things that were broken," he said.
In the end, the Longview district's voters approved a $16.7 million bond issue for school upgrades.
This room-by-room review of Lawrence district buildings is the first stage in forming the master plan. Information gathered during the tours will be entered into computers, which will be capable of generating cost estimates for any construction proposal.
While this DLR team organizes the Lawrence wish list, other staff with the firm will delve into curriculum issues. They'll survey educators, principals, board members and the public to identify facility shortcomings that get in the way of student learning.
When academic realities and bricks-and-mortar possibilities are joined in a few months, DLR will put together the blueprint for a prototype Lawrence school. This master planning document should be in rough draft by April and final form in June.
Lawrence school board members will lean on DLR's comprehensive plan to decide the size and scope of a bond issue to be presented to district voters most likely in November.
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