High school building presents daily maintenance, safety concerns

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

When it comes to maintaining the Charles City High School building, it’s getting more and more difficult for Charles City’s Buildings and Grounds Director Jerry Mitchell to keep up.

“With all the emergency repairs, we constantly have to be reactive, and I’d much rather be proactive,” Michell told members of the Charles City School District Board of Directors last week. “It’s definitely a building that’s served its purpose, but it’s also a building where it’s time to do some updates.”

Mitchell said his staff spends a lot more time repairing emergency issues, rather than working on preventative maintenance.

“From the conversations today, I think it’s clear that we have needs that we can’t fix with the funding that we have,” said Charles City Communication Director Justin DeVore. “It’s not because we haven’t maintained the building — we have, diligently. It is not the school that my parents grew up in. The jobs that we’re asking our students to do today are not the jobs we asked students to do 50 years ago.”

Mitchell and DeVore addressed the school board members at a work session last week, where Charles City Superintendent Mike Fisher said he will recommend the board initiate a communication plan to the community, regarding facilities improvements at the high school.

The school district has been looking into a modernization plan for the high school since the new middle school was completed three years ago. Results of recent community-wide survey, however, indicate that the public’s awareness of the district’s facility needs has waned, and the survey results reflected a relatively low level of support for a possible general obligation bond issue, which would need a 60% majority to pass.

Fisher has said that he believes something needs to be done regarding a bond issue in the next 18 months. That would leave three possible dates for getting a bond issue on the public ballot — March and September of 2020 and March of 2021.

Mitchell said that the biggest needs and issues relate to HVAC — heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

“Everything is near the end of life,” he said. “There are a lot of big decisions to make. If we can pass a bond and hopefully go to a geothermal system, or if we stay with HVAC, or whatever we do.”

Mitchell said there are lot of electrical issues in the 500 and 600 circles at the high school, and in the high school gym.

“We have a lot of underground conduits with electrical that are starting to collapse. A lot of the outlets underneath the stage are not operable anymore,” Mitchell said. “We also have three or four classrooms that go down, because a collapsed conduit pops the breakers.”

The high school also has asbestos issues, according to Mitchell.

“All the floor tile is all asbestos,” he said. “Some of the ceilings are asbestos. That applies to health and well-being.”

An even more serious safety issue at the school comes in regard to security problems, according to Mitchell.

“To be brutally honest, it’s horrible,” Mitchell said. “I could go into that building any place. You can go into that building, many ways, and just go on a rampage if you wanted to.”

He said windows and doors are often propped open when there is high heat, and the distance between the front entrance and the school’s front office do not meet safety standards, as a person can get buzzed into the school, but doesn’t have to necessarily go to the office.

“Security is not good,” Mitchell said. “There are certain classrooms in the circle that have the only emergency exits. Those doors have to remain open 24/7, because you have to have an emergency exit. If there is a fire, those exits need to be open to escape.”

At the December school board meeting, Paul Neuharth from Estes Construction reviewed the facilities needs study Estes completed for the district in Nov. 2018, and discussed a facilities survey completed last month.

Nueharth said the total costs of site, building and health and life safety improvements for all the district buildings assessed would range from about $24 million on the low end to just short of $36 million on the high end. Improvements classified as “urgent” range from $2.9 million to $4.6 million.

“I think we’re at the point now where we need to buckle down and start to tell the story, of the building concerns, of the safety concerns, and say this is a priority,” DeVore said. “I think it’s time to start telling that story, and see if there’s community support.”

Fisher said the facilities issues sometimes lead to problems with attracting prospective teachers to the district.

“It doesn’t help us with hiring, especially when we’re interviewing teachers in the summer,” Fisher said. “During the school year, even though the building isn’t in great shape, it’s full of people and it’s warm and inviting. When it really stinks for us is in the summer, in the empty skeleton of a building.”

Fisher told stories of teachers who said they loved the culture and climate of the school, but backed out of taking a position due to an offer from a district with a more modern building.

“Learning is driven by a quality facility that allows for it — that isn’t a barrier to it,” he said.

Some school board members suggested there could be a correlation between the quality of the school’s facilities and the student’s test scores.

“It all goes together,” said Director Pat Rottinghaus. “If we want to improve test scores, we have to have facilities that are viable for the learning that kids need to have.”

School Board President Josh Mack agreed.

‘We want to improve outcomes,” Mack said. “Not only test scores, but quality of life and opportunities. We want to have facilities that help nurture and grow that.”