Indianapolis Public Schools
$832 Million Program Moves into New Phase

by Pamela Dittmer McKuen

The mammoth capital improvement program of the Indianapolis Public Schools is a little ahead and a little behind, but pretty much on track. When finished, it will have taken more than a decade and about $832 million, and all 79 schools will see new academic life.

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"We're in an overlap of phases," said Debra Kunce of Indianapolis-based Schmidt Associates Inc., an architectural firm serving as the project's program manager. "We're on the downside of phase one and the upside of phase two."
IPS serves 38,000 pupils in kindergarten through high school.

Phase one, which began in 2002, created 28 advanced science labs in 23 middle and high schools to help prepare students for new state testing standards. The five traditional high schools, which serve grades nine through 12, also were renovated to include such enhancements as infrastructure upgrades, accessibility for those with disabilities, air conditioning and telecommunications systems.

At the elementary level, six new schools were built. Two of them, Wendell Phillips and James Russell Lowell, were closed 20-some years ago when desegregation reigned. They were sold and reacquired by the district, although by then the buildings had fallen into extreme disrepair. The schools were replaced with new ones and reopened last fall.

Despite all the construction, classes went on as usual, said Steve Young, the school district's chief of facilities management.

"In the high schools, students stayed in buildings and moved around as we did different portions of the building," he said. "In the elementary schools, each of them was built on the same site so the students stayed in the existing building while we built next to it. Then they moved in and we tore down the existing building."

Not disrupting students took some logistical science. Most of the elementary schools stood on two- or three-acre sites in developed neighborhoods with barely enough room for the building, a small parking lot and maybe a playground. At five of the sites, the district acquired small amounts of adjacent land. Even so, quarters were tight.

The solutions depended on the site. In some cases, the construction teams did remote staging or brought in materials only as needed. In others, they leased nearby land or bartered services in exchange for parking.

$250 Million First Phase

The cost of the first phase, $250 million, was funded by a bond initiative supported by property taxes. The rough breakdown for construction costs was $25 million per high school, $11 million per elementary school and $300,000 per science lab.

As the work wound down, various economies enabled the district to air-condition one elementary and one middle school ahead of schedule.

"That's money that won't have to be bonded in the future," Kunce said.

Phase two began in early 2006 with a budget of $200 million coming from a second bond initiative. Six middle schools are seeing renovation and infrastructure improvements, and most are being transformed for new or expanded uses.

For example, Thomas Carr Howe Academy and George Washington Community School will enroll students in Seventh through 12th grades.

Crispus Attucks is converting to a medical magnet school for students in sixth through 12th grades who wish to enter the healing professions. Shortridge Middle School is converting to a government and law magnet school for grades six through 12.

The second phase also renovates and expands three historic elementary schools: Christian Park, George W. Julian and Joseph J. Bingham. Christian Park is on the National Register of Historic Places.

"That one had an addition in the 1950s and we are tearing it off," Young said.

"It wasn't built very well. It's not as stable as the original building, which was built in the early 1900s."

The new additions are designed to complement the historic nature of the existing buildings, he added.

One more project is at Arsenal Technical High School, where the music and cafeteria building and a gymnasium will undergo renovation. The classroom buildings were renovated during phase one.

The construction for phase two, scheduled for completion in 2009, will cost about $20 million per middle school, $11 million per elementary school and $6 million for Arsenal Tech. Contracts have begun to be awarded.

"Because we have such a large school district and so many schools, we have attempted to create a sequence that impacts the most students initially and the greatest geographic area," Young said. "For example, the high schools impact the whole district. Now we're focusing on the second level of widespread distribution, the middle schools, but we are not able to do all the middle schools at one time."

Throughout the school system, environmental and accessibility improvements are major issues, Young said.

"When we started, very few of our buildings were air-conditioned," he said.

"A lot of our buildings were inaccessible. They didn't have elevators. They had four or five levels with only stairs to get up and down. The older elementary schools are three-level buildings and the only restrooms were in the basement.

That's the way they built them."

Increasing Phase Count

Since its inception in the late 1990s, the original two-phase program has undergone a few modifications.

Among the reasons: a change in school board leadership, strong and growing sensitivities to property tax impacts and the establishment of 17 charter schools that contributed to a loss of a couple thousand pupils.

As a result, the program was broken into three phases and the timeline for completion was extended. The budget for phase 3, which will renovate the remaining 55 or so elementary schools, has yet to be determined. A fourth phase is possible.

"I expect that with delays and additional considerations, we'll go a little longer than a 10-year plan," Kunce said. "These decisions have to be very deliberate."

Maximizing the precious tax dollars requires constant scrutiny, Young said.

Among the fiscal management techniques the district employs are the set-aside of contingency funds and two-tier bid requests listing base and alternate items.

In a few instances, when bids exceeded the budget, the design team was sent back to the drawing board. And Young's extensive maintenance staff gets tapped for ideas and suggestions.

"We've been very aggressive in establishing budgets and requiring our professionals to meet those budgets," he said. "We feel it is absolutely essential that we not have to ask the community to pay for more than what we committed to get things done."

Providing construction management on the various projects are multiple firms and joint ventures. One is Indianapolis-based Shiel Sexton Construction Co., which filled this role at two schools during the first phase and is doing the same for Shortridge.

A unique aspect of the program is the advanced age of many of the schools, said senior project manager Randy Waren.

"It's a special challenge to know exactly what existing conditions are and how they are going to be impacted with new construction," he said. "It takes a lot of preplanning and going through attics and basements and crawl spaces to see what's there. There are always surprises."

At Brookside Elementary School, one of the new construction projects, a couple of large painted murals were saved and reinstalled in the new building, said Don Jungst, vice president of construction manager Smoot Construction in Indianapolis.

"They came in and cut the wall out with the mural and stabilized it to be transported," he added. "It was put in a frame and we put it in a pocket in a new wall. IPS did an extensive amount of salvaging of unique items and integrating them into new structures."

For phase two, Smoot is charged with managing the construction of Julian.

Despite the work that is yet to be done, rewards are all ready evident. "We know we're making an impact," Kunce said. "We're seeing some scores go up. We're seeing people fixing up their houses adjacent to the school. We're seeing communities come back together and more fully utilize their schools-one neighborhood at a time."


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