Council, mayor get stark picture of excess school capacity

Tim Forsberg
Posted 5/19/15

Ed Frenette, senior vice president for Symmes Maini & McKee Associates (SMMA), the firm recently hired to provide a long-term school facilities master plan, met with Mayor Scott Avedisian and the …

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Council, mayor get stark picture of excess school capacity

Posted

Ed Frenette, senior vice president for Symmes Maini & McKee Associates (SMMA), the firm recently hired to provide a long-term school facilities master plan, met with Mayor Scott Avedisian and the City Council in the council chamber last Wednesday. His hour-long progress report delivered a stark message.

“Clearly, this is not sustainable in regards to the trend and the reduction of the populations of the schools, it’s a lot of kids,” said Frenette of his firm’s demographic study of the city. “I’d have to say that it’s almost the most dramatic I’ve seen in 45 years of practice.”

Last week’s status report was an explanation of the ongoing planning process by SMMA to generate a master plan for Warwick’s schools, while making decisions and requesting feedback as to what would be the city’s preferred master plan.

“You can think of the master plan as a book. It’s a book about three inches thick, a big book, and we’re more or less publishing this book chapter by chapter rather than all at once,” Frenette told the council. “We will of course deliver it to the school district as a completed volume at the end, but this whole process becomes a bit ominous if the first time you see this master plan you see it as one chunk. It’s just a lot of stuff to try to cope with.”

SMMA is well versed in school facilities planning. The company has completed 21 master plan studies in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in the past 15 years. They were the only firm in New England considered to be the master planners for Boston’s school system, which they’ve also recently started.  

Frenette went on to explain SMMA’s completed 55 additions and renovations in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, including additions to East Greenwich High and in East Providence. They’ve also completed 32 new construction projects in the last 20 years in both states. 

Warwick has presented some unique challenges to the firm.

“One of the significant things to understand about this process is that we’re generating, I think we’re up to seven, master plan alternatives right now,” said Frenette. “We will begin eliminating some of those alternatives during this whole process of deciding on a preferred master plan, which is going to be done through an open process where we have workshop sessions.”

Prior to meeting with the council, there had been two community workshops with the Warwick School Committee. The focus has been on the demographic study outlining how many children are coming into the system, when are they entering it, and where are they coming from.

That study projects declining enrollment by year. In 2012, for example, the system lost 12 classrooms of children. In the 2014-15 school year, it’s estimated the system will lose seven classrooms of students. A classroom ranges between 24 and 25 students.

“I use classrooms full of children as a way of making this slightly more dramatic and memorable,” said Frenette. “As of today, school year 2014-15, you have seven more average sized schools than you need in terms of capacity. Next year it will be eight.” 

Citing costs of upkeep of unused facilities, Frenette believes Warwick’s schools have too much capacity to be effectively used. 

“When you have 30 to 40 percent more space than you need, there’s no possible way that you can creatively use that to enhance education. It’s just plain too much space,” he said. 

Frenette also discussed augmenting the master plan, which included plans such as consolidating both primary and secondary schools; creating broad band middle schools (5th-8th) and two magnet high schools; creating three campuses with two schools (middle and high) with magnet high schools, or create new “super middle and high schools,” amongst others. 

“You’re going to consolidate, and the reason is … the very next time you go and ask the Rhode Island Department of Education for money, you will not get reimbursement under the new regulations, which came up in 2007,” said Frenette. “They are not going to fund roofs on buildings you don’t need.” 

SMMA hopes all parties involved provide feedback as they progress to see if they’re on track, editing the plan along the way, which they hope to have completed in the next several weeks. Frenette will address the council again with more financial and traffic figures as they become clearer.  

Knowing that this process is a difficult one for the community, the firm reinforced that it wants to work openly and collaboratively when dealing with some of the city’s most valuable assets. 

“It’s not going to be easy, we have to all more or less agree that we’re going to put our normal allegiances aside and try to be the advocate for the children, an advocate for the total city, not for a part of the city, not for just some children,” Frenette told the council. “That’s a difficult thing to do, but so far it seems that it’s working.”

 

Comments

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  • JohnStark

    If the school committee and/or supt. wish to retain any scintilla of credibility they have left, they will close at least two schools before September as a show to taxpayers that they are paying attention. This has dragged on long enough, and you get the sense that ANY plan to close ANY school will be opposed by the teachers' union and uninformed parents. Warwick needs three high schools and three junior highs like a fish needs a bicycle. And the hesitancy to do anything pending a magic "middle school model" is simply laughable (expensive, but laughable) as said "model" will do little more than rearrange the deck chairs as the SS Warwick continues to show it's age following years of neglect.

    Tuesday, May 19, 2015 Report this

  • connor

    This is kind of funny. I remember a grumpy old guy named Eugene Naduio whining and complaining about everything to do with the city. He was running for School Committee to straighten it all out. I believe he's been on the committee for years now. So how is it possible there are any issues like thing going on. He said he would straighten all this out so there is no way there are 8 to 10 too many schools Eugene promised.

    Tuesday, May 19, 2015 Report this

  • jackiemama63

    I've been attending the SMMA meetings and it's painful...because the "Master Plans" they are floating are exactly the same "Master Plans" that were looked at, bandied about, and with the exception of the final "plan" in 2013, were set aside. The reason the other plans were "set aside" is because they were going to cost the district a tremendous amount of money..which they do not have. "Bond money?" Hah! The City of Warwick will never release the bond money from 2006 (2005?) because WPS were told that there is a need to consolidate to address the declining school-age population. That was 10 years ago! We closed some elementary schools, worked for years to come up with a decent plan to consolidate at the secondary level, and that "plan" was soundly rejected by the Warwick School Committee. Here we are, almost two years after the last "plan" was introduced, and we are being told the same thing, being shown the same plans...only now, there are even LESS children in our schools, and the Warwick School Committee has pissed away $250,000 that could have been used for more important things. One other thing to note, we have an airport in the middle of our City, and as long as it continues to expand, we will continue to see our population decline. That's to be expected. There will be no population "boom" in this City ever again, and people must face that. Change is inevitable, embrace it. Or not.

    Tuesday, May 19, 2015 Report this

  • Norm88

    Where is the outrage? Do schools need to be closed YES. Should there be a timeline and a plan YES again… But this is what I am seeing here this is the 3rd or 4th year of level funding to the WSD, so where has all the revenue generated from the tax increases gone?? To the city side of the budget, why is that okay with some of the folks in this city? Why is it okay that this report comes out at budget time when a tax increase is coming? This is for sure grandstanding and smoke screens at their finest getting people to look at a problem we all knew was there and taking yet more tax dollars…

    Tuesday, May 19, 2015 Report this

  • bill2015

    Any cost savings from closing a few school buildings is small potatoes, and will be meaningless in the long run. My property tax bill says (a "did you know?" type disclosure) that schools get over half of what I pay. If current enrollment is 9000 students, and designed capacity was 20000, then we cannot afford to operate the schools at the capacity they were operated at in the past. This means there is something seriously wrong, and it's not extra school buildings. The largest share of the schools costs come from things the taxpayer or even elected officials have essentially little control over. We live in a class society, where one class has constitutionally guaranteed rights (guaranteed in some states, and in RI some argue the effect is the same). Until this changes, the underlying issues motivating building closures will forever repeat.

    Wednesday, May 20, 2015 Report this