After a $3.5 million bond issue was barely defeated in April, Houston Superintendent Dr. Dan Vandiver asked the school board for direction. He was told to start from scratch in assessing the district’s needs.
He did, and the answer was clear: Houston needs a new high school.
After several months of research, Vandiver laid out a plan during a special school board meeting Tuesday night for an estimated $7.5 million project that would build a new high school adjacent to Hiett Gymnasium.
Vandiver provided the school board multiple options for improvement, including a new auditorium, gymnasium and all-weather track. The board approved a scaled-down version for solely a new high school building and gave Vandiver permission to move forward with the measure.
Vandiver said Wednesday morning that he would send out requests for proposals to various architectural firms by the end of the week, and they will be reviewed at the October regular school board meeting. Vandiver hopes to have architectural renditions by the beginning of the year in time to place the measure on the April ballot.
The earlier bond issue, which fell just three votes shy of passing, called for a new library, computer and science labs, as well as additional classrooms at the site of the Fine Arts Building. Vandiver said the new plan would address those issues and more.
“The overwhelming consensus is we don’t want to build in phases or put a Band-aid on what we have,” Vandiver said. “Let’s build what we need now.”
The new high school building would include 12 regular classrooms that are technology ready, three science classrooms with labs, three special education classrooms, commons area, library with computer lab, cafeteria, 30-station computer lab and office complex.
Under the plan, the middle school would be moved to the current high school. An addition would be built that connected the building to the current library, which would become the middle school library, and would house a computer lab, restrooms and an elevator for handicap access to the second floor.
The current middle school building would remain intact. The gymnasium would continue to host practices and games, and classrooms would potentially be used for middle school art, speech and choir classes that require shared teachers with the high school.
When told to access the district needs, Vandiver discovered several problems. The biggest were Houston’s spread out campus and the intermingling of middle school and high school students. He believes a new high school building would address those issues.
Vandiver said the district can bond $5 million while maintaining the existing 80-cent debt service levy. The remaining money would be achieved through lease/purchase or a levy increase.
“There’s a definite need. Will we exist as a school without a new building in the next year or two? Sure,” Vandiver said. “But we need a building that supports the technology we need to be teaching our students to use. We have classrooms that are too small and our two biggest needs, the library and cafeteria, will be addressed with a new building.”
The process began with Vandiver, who contacted other districts with new facilities and met with L.J. Hart representatives for financial advice, sending questionnaires to the school faculty. They were asked to prioritize the district’s biggest needs from a list of eight items. The library and cafeteria were the biggest concerns.
The current library, which Vandiver said is too small for the high school alone, serves students in grades 6-12. It is also technologically behind.
The cafeteria also serves both high school and middle school students in three shifts – one that forces teachers to stop 25 minutes into a class period for lunch, then resume class afterwards. Some students eat as early as 11 a.m. while others must wait until 12:30 p.m.
“You take a football or volleyball player that eats at 11 in the morning and goes straight from school to practice. We want them to work hard in practice and they don’t get home until 6 in the evening. That’s a long time to be that active without eating,” Vandiver said.
A few weeks ago, Vandiver was part of a nine-person group of school members and five members of the community who toured new high schools at Clever and Hollister. This past week, he met with teachers in all three buildings to share results from the questionnaire and open lines of communication for feedback.
The only public opposition that surfaced in the defeated $3.5 million levy was the destruction of the Fine Arts Building, which has since been deemed unsafe and no longer hosts classes. Although the building would still be removed under the newest plan, Vandiver said its memory would be preserved through a memorial wall in the new library or commons area that would be built with its brick and include photographs of the building and a brief history.
“I know there’s some opposition to (tearing it down). But I know some people that were opposed have come to realize the building has served its purpose,” Vandiver said. “The question I would propose is, ‘What can our community be more proud of?’ Preserving an old building with limited utility or building a brand new educational facility to serve our kids today?”