Indianapolis Public Schools
Team Aces School Test While Students Watch, Learn
by Jeffrey Steele

The construction teams building new schools on the sites of existing schools for the Indianapolis Public Schools system are working while classes remain in session.

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The task has required working in extremely tight sites, said Randy Waren, project manager on Eleanor Skillen School 34 for the Indianapolis-based joint venture of Shiel Sexton Co. Inc. and Corbitt & Sons Co. The site of School 34 is bordered by narrow city streets on three sides and by Interstate 65 on the other. In addition, it features shallow setbacks from sidewalks and streets.

"The project left very small amounts of area to be utilized for construction staging, and that required as-needed deliveries," Waren added. "The other challenge was all deliveries had to be coordinated around the start of school and dismissal of school. The streets are tight for buses, even without any additional construction traffic.

"And special additional logistical planning was done for any especially large deliveries or crane movements to set the steel and mechanical equipment."

For instance, the route to be used for the delivery of the chiller was planned long before the delivery, and streets were walked and measured to ensure trucks could deliver to the site, Waren said.

The tight sites also impacted contractor parking. At one school project, construction workers parked at a nearby church, and at others, they parked on adjacent side streets.

Ray Kramp, vice president of Smoot Construction LLC in Indianapolis, mentioned the same kind of obstacles for the construction of James Whitcomb Riley School 43.

"We had limited parking for the faculty, limited space for bus unloading, limited space for construction staging," he said. "It's a phased construction, and once the new building is up, we'll raze the old one, and then build the kindergarten addition on the site of the old building."

Beneath the site of the old building, Smoot will add utility infrastructure for the new school, including a storm water retention system composed of underground pipes.

Learning plans were created that allowed pupils to learn from the construction projects. At School 34, for instance, pupils worked with the architects and contractors to create a wall mosaic of materials from both old and new schools that will appear in the new

Elements of $832M Plan

Construction of School 34, School 43 and Brookside Elementary School 54 is part of a much larger project, said Debra Kunce, program manager for Indianapolis-based Schmidt Associates Inc.

The architecture firm serves as program manager for the entire school construction project and is responsible for $250 million worth of work on 36 IPS schools in phase one of the project. This phase is part of a 10-year plan to improve all 79 of the system's schools at a budget of $832 million, Kunce said.

Schools 34 and 43 are under construction and are slated to open in spring 2005. Construction will begin on School 54 in the spring, with a slated completion date during the school year of 2006-07. All three schools are replacing old schools bearing the same names built during the period from 1910 to 1912.

The three schools are each budgeted at about $11 million in hard construction costs. School 34 was designed by Fort Wayne-based Schenkel Shultz. School 43 was designed by Indianapolis-based Blackburn Architects, and School 54 was designed by San Francisco-based URS Corp. and will be construction managed by Smoot.

Each is based on the same program, accommodating 600 pupils and featuring kindergarten through fifth grade.

However, the program is adapted to the individual school sites, Kunce said.

"These buildings are intended to be community-based schools, with rooms in each one dedicated for use for community meetings," she added. "There will also be offices for Indianapolis parks and the YMCA, so they can run after-school programs."

The new schools are the first IPS facilities to be built in 10 to 15 years, Kunce said.

Two additional schools starting construction in the spring will not replace existing schools. James Russell Lowell School 51 in the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood and Wendell Phillips School 63 in the Haughville neighborhood will serve communities that due to a desegregation order that sent students to other communities, have not had IPS schools in at least 20 years, Kunce said.

Sites Averaged 2.5 Acres

To accommodate construction, additional land was acquired where possible.

That was necessary because the sites for Schools 34, 43 and 54 averaged just 2.5 acres.

But the added land won't be enough to build the entire new school without demolishing the old one in every case. For example, School 34 is being constructed in two phases on its 2.8-acre site, Waren said.

Approximately 80 percent of the new building will be complete in the spring, and pupils and teachers will move in at that time. Then the old building will be torn down, and the new school will be completed on the site of the former school.

Safety of pupils, teachers and staff was a primary concern. In addition to suspending material deliveries during the times when pupils arrive at and leave school, contractors ensured construction areas are fenced off at all times, Kunce said.

Hallmarks of the new schools' construction have included highly durable materials and abundant use of windows. The IPS builds its schools to last at least 50 years, Kunce said.

For that reason, "materials of permanence" such as terrazzo corridor floors, concrete masonry unit walls and brick masonry exteriors were chosen.

Durability was also behind the decision not to place mechanical equipment on rooftops, where it would likely sustain damage from the elements.

Natural light was another priority. "We have a significant amount of windows in the classrooms to ensure natural light in students' regular learning environments," Kunce said. "Even our dining rooms and media centers have windows."

Attention to current and future budgets led to analyzing a number of potential mechanical systems to determine which was most economical in initial cost and day-to-day operating costs.

"In school systems, you pay for energy out of the same fund that pays teachers," Kunce said. "If we can save $40,000 a year on energy costs, we can put another teacher in the classroom. It really does make a difference."

The new schools will also feature air conditioning, which isn't the case at all IPS facilities. A study last year showed IPS pupils in air-conditioned schools scored an average of eight points higher on standardized tests than those at schools without it.

"We know adding air conditioning to these buildings will help the students of IPS," Kunce said.