North Penn: High school plans falling into place after meeting

LANSDALE — Dozens of residents have had their say in putting together the pieces of the puzzle.

And there are plenty of pieces, as plans for renovations to North Penn High School continue to be developed and vetted in a mid-July workshop, district officials said Monday.

“We had 90 individuals attend the planning meeting, and it included staff, students, community members, administration, board members, and township officials,” said district Director of Facilities and Operations Tom Schneider.

“I really think that most people really engaged and enjoyed it,” he said.

Renovations to the high school have been discussed for much of the past decade, and district staff and the district’s architect The Schrader Group made a pair of presentations outlining the high school’s recent equipment failures in February, then in March gave cost estimates for two options: adding a new ninth-grade wing of the school and include middle school renovations at an estimated price tag of roughly $400 million, or a smaller project to update the high school without a new wing for roughly $236 million.

Since those presentations, the board’s facilities and facilities and operations committee heard in March from high school students about green features the renovations could include, in April they discussed timelines for construction, and in May and June the board issued an RFP for a construction management firm and for a consultant to oversee a voter referendum needed to approve an estimated $94 million in borrowing for the new addition.

In the past month, Schneider told the facilities and operations committee on Monday night, the highlight has been the July 17 community input meeting, in which groups of invited outsiders were able to piece together simulated classrooms, fields, parking lots, and more.

“It was basically a process of having the site plan rolled out on a table, and it was little blocks of plastic which were the ninth grade, tenth grade classrooms, and you moved the pieces around the site plan, and you developed what your team thought was the best options,” he said.

Highlights from that workshop were shown in a five-minute video produced by the district’s NPTV channel, which featured introductions by Superintendent Todd Bauer and architect David Schrader explaining the purpose of the meeting.

“The premise is: if we add on the square footage necessary to have ninth grade on our campus — what do we want? What does the community prioritize? Where should things be? And having conversations about the vision of what this could look like,” said Bauer.

In the NPTV video Bauer, Schrader, and Pete Nicholson, administrator for secondary education and renovations, are shown leading a discussion among students, board members, residents, Towamencin officials and more, with tabletop photos showing the high school campus as it exists now, and color-coded plastic pieces meant to represent the amount of space needed for each grade or facility.

“Those will be used for moving around on the site plan so that people can really take a look at the site functions, the building functions, and all of those parts and pieces that go together,” Schrader said.

“The real goal here, if we don’t come up with a full design, is to get some ideas from people: big-picture ideas that we can take away and turn into a facility concept, to move towards the referendum,” he said.

High school English teacher Elizabeth Weizer said the meeting included talks about “what the high school could look like after renovations,” and said the blocks representing the classrooms were “almost like Legos,” while Towamencin Supervisor Laura Smith said it was “the most exciting, entertaining, collaborative event,” and high school senior Nathan Schwing said he helped design his own set of plans for the renovated school.

“You had to put the pieces in, and it’s scary to move the first part, but when we really broke it down to what had to stay? What had to stay in place? Just having a thoughtful discussion about what we envisioned and where things had to go, it just came together,” Smith said.

“We got to imagine, if we were the designers or the architects of the building, where everything would go,” Weizer added, and Schwing said “We tried to make the best design using parts of the school that we absolutely couldn’t move, and move around other parts to accommodate ninth grade the best, and really change the school for the better.”

Each group then shared their ideas with the others, and Bauer said the architect will now take that feedback into refining a design for more public talks through the summer and into fall.

“They’re going to give a schematic design, of what the building could look like, and then if we were to go to a referendum in the winter or spring, hopefully, our community will be able to see: what are you voting for?” Bauer said.

School board President Tina Stoll added that she was “really looking forward to finally getting the show on the road” after years of pandemic-related delays, and NPHS senior Anna Weatherwax said she “learned a lot about what the community thinks, what the staff and the students think, and I thought it was really interesting.”

“Going into this, I thought the general idea would be, have the ninth graders separate, but I was hearing a lot — and I think so too — about integrating the ninth graders” onto the high school campus, she said.

Senior Kriya Shah added that she thought it a “really cool experience,” and let her imagine what the school would look like for her younger brother, and future generations, a sentiment Smith echoed while noting the school looks very similar to when she attended classes there.

“I’m excited about the future, of what could happen, and what things will look like. Proud member of the class of 1984, and everything still looks like when the school was built. And it’s time to update things,” Smith said.

After viewing the video, facilities committee Chairwoman Cathy Wesley said she enjoyed the workshop, especially hearing from students: “They really engaged, and had some very thoughtful, great ideas.” Stoll added that she saw “administration, we had teachers, we had students, we had parents, we had senior citizens, so I think we were pretty well-represented across the board.”

Board member Juliane Ramic added that she heard “some ideas I don’t think we had even thought of,” and said the workshop “was fascinating, it was wonderful,” while Stoll said she saw most groups had one thing in common.

“Everybody had the community center part up front: the cafeteria, the athletic area, and the auditoriums. So it would be nice if we could do that. That seemed to be the one thing everybody agreed on,” she said.

Wesley added that doing so would bring one clear benefit, for anyone who has walked the long high school concourse to the main auditorium: “So folks aren’t walking as far as they are now, when we want to engage the community.”

As for the two RFPs, Schneider told the committee that staff received seven proposals for the construction management firm as of mid-July, conducted interviews with all seven and then second interviews with three finalists, and staff will bring a recommendation to the full school board for action on August 8. Regarding a referendum consultant, staff received three proposals in late June, interviewed each in mid-July, but won’t recommend a formal contract to the board.

“After consideration of the three firms, it was decided that the district would not engage the referendum consultant. Instead of the district engaging the consultant, Schrader Group Architects contracted with one of the three firms, at no additional cost to the district and no increase of their fee,” Schneider said.

During the facilities and operations committee meeting, the group also heard a detailed presentation from Schrader, the architect, on how his firm developed initial cost estimates for the renovations and ninth grade addition in 2018, then added cost escalations, additional space based on programming needs identified since then, and added costs for the relocation of the district transportation facilities off of the high school site — with the qualifier that the estimates are only that.

“You won’t really know what this project costs until you bid this in 2025: where the contractors have the opportunity to bid on the construction documents that they receive, and finally move into construction,” Schrader said.

On typical projects, the architect builds in a four percent cost escalation each year to account for inflation and other cost increases, but the pandemic years of 2021 saw a 13 percent cost escalation, followed by another eight percent hike in 2022. For comparison, Schrader told the committee, an estimated $100 cost would compound into $137 over that five-year time frame.

“What we’ve been trying to do is to build a budget that the district can start to build some financing around,” he said.

Resident Jason Lanier questioned the accuracy of those figures and whether certain components of the project were being double-counted in the estimates, and district CFO Steve Skrocki said those cost estimates should come into sharper focus shortly, likely by fall.

“We don’t want to get hung up too much on this reconciliation from 2018-19. I think what’s going to be important is going to be the next round of estimates, which are going to be based on an actual design, not just based on square footage,” Skrocki said.

North Penn’s school board next meets at 7 p.m. on Aug. 8 and the facilities and operations committee next meets at 7 p.m. on Aug. 28; for more information visit www.NPenn.org.

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