The Lawrence College and Career Center, 2910 Haskell Ave.

The Lawrence school district’s renovations of its 20 schools have already cost more than $10 million in addition to the $92.5 million bond issue, and district officials say that amount will rise as construction continues through the upcoming year.

While one factor is the rise of construction costs since planning for the bond projects occurred, the largest increases have gone toward making improvements at the secondary level, including additions to the Lawrence College and Career Center.

“The elementary schools were obviously the focus of the bond issue, and so when we went into it with the secondary schools, we knew we didn’t have enough money to do everything we needed to do,” said Kyle Hayden, assistant superintendent of business and operations for the district.

About three-quarters of the $92.5 million bond went toward the district’s 14 elementary schools, with most of that focused on six older schools in central and eastern Lawrence: Sunset Hill, Kennedy, Cordley, Hillcrest, Pinckney and New York.

The additional $10.1 million focuses more on the secondary schools, with half of the funds accounted for by six schools: LCCC, Quail Run Elementary, Liberty Memorial Central Middle, Lawrence High, Free State High and West Middle.

Rising construction costs

About $2.3 million of the additional funds are from the bond interest, with the remaining $7.8 million coming from the district’s capital outlay funds. Hayden said district officials do not know exactly how much is attributable to rising construction costs, but such costs do account for a portion.

School board member Shannon Kimball, who has been on the board’s Facility Planning Committee since the bond issue passed in 2013, agreed that rising construction costs have contributed to some degree.

“I think just the general construction market in Lawrence and regionally has picked up a lot, and that has driven up costs,” she said. “When we were doing the pre-bond planning three-plus years ago, we were still kind of recovering from the bottoming out in the housing market, and all of these contractors and (subcontractors) were not nearly as busy as they are now.”

But both Hayden, who is also on the committee, and Kimball said that though rising construction costs played a part in some projects, the vast majority of the additional spending is for “add-ons,” or renovations that weren’t part of the original bond construction plan.

Efficiencies

Kimball said taking on additional renovations while contractors are already working at a building is more efficient than going back and doing updates later.

“I think in some ways we’ve been able to make those capital outlay dollars stretch further because we’ve done a lot of work in conjunction with the bond projects,” she said, adding that the district typically spends $6 million to $8 million per year on upkeep of facilities.

Hayden said the bond dollars took care of the essential renovations at the secondary schools, but school officials knew they wouldn’t be able to cover everything.

“We’re going to take care of the big needs with some bond dollars, but we’re not going to be able to touch everything that needs to happen, so that’s where the capital improvement plan and the capital outlay dollars for those projects came into play,” he said.

Additions

About $2.3 million of the additional funds went toward “furniture and fixtures” for use district-wide. Kimball said a lot of the furniture within the district, and even within schools themselves, was mismatched, and replacing it was a needed update that also provided standardization and interchangeability among schools. The amount spent also helped replace the hardware on most of the classroom doors in the district, equipping them with keypad entry for security reasons, she said.

About $1.7 million went toward the LCCC. The original bond plan would have left about half of the area of the building unfinished, but Hayden said there was enough student interest in the program that they decided to go ahead and finish the entire facility.

Another $936,000 at Quail Run was spent mostly to replace the building’s roof, which Kimball said had an interior gutter system that was causing issues with moisture in the school.

“We didn’t have mold, but it was not a good design, and the only way to fix that was to rip the whole roof off and replace it,” she said.

Hayden said that at Liberty Memorial Central, an additional $704,000 covered a new section of roof and skylights, amounting to about $214,000, as well as several interior updates. At West, the majority of the additional $572,000 was used to completely remodel the school’s kitchen.

Both high schools were allocated additional dollars, with $660,000 going toward Lawrence and another $642,000 toward Free State. Hayden said that at Lawrence, the most significant add-on was putting new doors on every classroom, as well as about $200,000 for a new intercom system. At Free State, more than half of the extra funds paid for the remodel of four classrooms.

Remaining projects

Four construction projects — at Lawrence High and Woodlawn, Kennedy and Sunset Hill elementary schools — are currently in progress. Six projects are in preliminary stages, Hayden said. Construction at Schwegler and Deerfield begins this month, and projects at Pinckney, Sunflower, Broken Arrow and Prairie Park are scheduled to begin this summer.

The committee will discuss what additional renovations to incorporate into the remaining bond projects, with final approval given by the board. Kimball said priorities for add-ons aren’t yet identified for the six remaining projects, but additions funded by both capital outlay and bond interest will be discussed and voted on as they move along.