Any major reworking of the State High campus may well hinge on a voter referendum.
At a special work session Wednesday night, several State College school-board members indicated the public ought to decide on any planned overhaul — including the price tag — at the ballot box.
‘I think it’s central that the educational vision be out there in the community,’ said board member Chris Small. ‘ … Building a high school should be a very exciting time for a community. You do it once every 50, 60 years.’
Small and other board members said the public should be engaged in the facility-planning process from the start. Jim Pawelczyk, the board vice president, said the board has a lackluster record in dealing with the high-school-facilities issue and ‘should seek their (the public’s) permission’ for any major project there.
Several current board members, before joining the elected body, were active in a community effort to stop a prior high-school overhaul plan. That concept, designed to unite grades nine through 12 in a single building, ignited a long controversy about five years ago. It would have cost more than $100 million.
The sitting board appears to have reached an unofficial consensus that the next big facilities project on the district agenda should be State College Area High School, which sits on the 600 block of Westerly Parkway. Members appeared to agree Wednesday that they should formalize that sentiment with an official vote on Aug. 23.
Meanwhile, the district administration has assembled a rough, tentative proposed timeline for the State High project. In a 40-minute presentation Wednesday, Superintendent Richard Mextorf suggested that the board and administration complete, by next summer, a high-school educational plan to deliver to an architect.
That is, ‘if we’re going to move forward,’ Mextorf said.
His presentation illustrated fundamental changes in the American workforce: the effects of globalization, the migration of white-collar jobs overseas and the decline of domestic blue-collar jobs as family-sustaining work.
Mextorf said the future in the U.S. will belong largely to those who can manage digital information, embrace a global awareness, encourage creativity and take initiative — among other qualities.
To that end, he said, the new high-school facility should be designed to help the faculty develop ‘original thinkers, provocateurs and people who care.’
‘We have an opportunity to design state-of-the-art, no-frills … (a place) that provides students the advantages of a comprehensive high school (but) that feels like a small school, where everyone is connected,’ Mextorf said.
‘You can’t talk about the practical stuff until you talk about the context in which it’s embedded,’ he said of the facilities discussion. ‘ … We need to make sure our kids are irreplaceable.’
He and other district leaders emphasized what they called a need to integrate some disciplines, such as science, engineering and technology.
Already, the district faculty is working to break down segregation among those disciplines, said science coordinator David Klindienst. A new, well-designed facility could speed up that process, he said.
Likewise, Mextorf said faculty and staff input should be incorporated deeply into the facility-planning process.
Board members appeared to agree that planning for the school’s long-term programmatic needs should precede — and inform — discussion about the physical structure itself.
Several also agreed that any discussion of project costs should include comprehensive consideration for other upcoming facilities projects, including at elementary schools.
Business administrator Jeff Ammerman said every $25 million in new borrowing could necessitate a property-tax increase of roughly three percent.
He said the district, according to overarching plans, can spend about $150 million to $225 million overall on its remaining capital projects in the near future — including elementary-school improvements. The question of exactly how to pay for a State High project has yet to be addressed by the board.
Ed Poprik, the district director of physical plant, has said the entire improvement process at State High is likely to take seven or eight years, from preliminary talks this summer to the completion of construction.
The district Facility Master Plan Steering Committee has recommended that the board keep State High on Westerly Parkway and renovate the existing North and South buildings, build new ones or do some combination of both.
Earlier coverage: State High Improvements To Be Discussed Anew
