posted by Mike Madison at 8:24 AM /
Timothy Steinhauer is new superintendent, replacing John Allison, who left to become superintendent of the Wichita Public Schools in Kansas.
Dr. Steinhauer said his primary focus will be to keep the high school renovation project on track.
In June, the board approved the schematic design and directed architects to move into design and development.
Initial plans have been submitted to the state Department of Education.
The district could see groundbreaking on the project, which is currently projected to cost $114 million, in about a year.
A new safety initiative at the high school this year will have more uniformed officers from the Mt. Lebanon Police Department spending time at the school through an arrangement between the district and police department.
This is an expansion of an already existing relationship between the district and police through which crime prevention officers ran programs and spent time in the school.
Now, crime prevention and other uniformed officers will use an office in the high school during their shifts and in between other duties to be available for questions from students and faculty.
The officers' presence in the high school "will add a level of visibility and added security," high school Principal Ron Davis said in a letter to parents.
Also at the high school, an "Athletes Deck" mentoring program will pair each ninth-grade athlete with an upperclass athlete from the same sport to help with the transition to high school.
At the elementary level, the district will for the first time offer brown bag lunches for sale at each of the seven elementaries. The program was piloted at Lincoln and Washington elementaries last year. It will not impact elementary students who still want to go home for lunch.
Some in the community are under the impression that major decisions remain to be made regarding the type and scope of renovation/reconstruction/new building to be done at the high school.
Based on the above, the superintendent, the School District, and the School Board appear to have made it clear to the news media that this is not the case, that the time for community input has ended, that debate and controversy has ended, and that the ship is being fitted for its maiden voyage. That would be the high-school-as-Queen-Mary-2 to its fans ("the grandest, most magnificent ocean liner ever built"), or the high-school-as-Titanic to its critics ("unsinkable").
The news media, overworked, understaffed and not particularly interested, appear to be happy to accept that story.
Here at the blog, we'll continue to do more.
14 Comments:
The Mt. Lebanon Republican Committee conducted a community survey (questions on both the high school project and municipal budgeting) that was to conclude on August 14th.
We should all look forward to the tabulated results, promised to the public, but not yet released.
Bill, considering the awful 8th grade wording of that survey I'm not sure what impact it will have on this or any other issue - and I'm a registered Republican.
Dave, I basically agree with you and I am also a registered Republican; however, we know that a majority of the school board will do all in their power to prevent an electoral referendum on the high school. And, the general public will just not stand up enmasse to this "steamroller" that is running amuck.
Bill, here's how I see it. Most in Lebo (old, young, kids, no kids, Rs and Ds) think that something should be done to improve the high school. I think most would also agree that something in the range between $75-90 million would be sufficient to improve the failing mechanical/physical plant components of the building and improve the overall quality of the EDUCATIONAL environment for many generations to come. Unfortunately, only 9 residents get a vote. And it appears that the majority of those 9 seem intent on creating something on a much larger scale. I'm not sure why. Perhaps its because they see this as their opportunity to leave their mark on our community. Perhaps they are listening to pockets of residents who want the end all, be all of school facilities. Perhaps they are bowing to the athletic programs, all of whom have their own wants and expectations. I'm not sure how we got to this point, and personally I don't agree with it.
However, our system of govt is not set up for me, or you, or any us individually to get our way, every time. Sometimes we get lucky, and things fall our way. Sometimes they don't. In this instance, I could go to every school board meeting alone or in a group and argue for something less than what's on the table. However, as long as there are enough board members who disagree, the ship will continue to sail into the sunset.
I've argued loud and often that regardless of which path they choose, this Board needs to do SOMETHING. If they've selected an option that I disagree with, I can accept that decision. How I choose to deal with that decision and its impacts on my family are up to me and me alone. That's what I can control. Will I move? I doubt it. Will I vote for any of these folks again? That remains to be seen, but frankly I'd be surprised if anyone of them even want the gig again. Similarly, though, the Board members that are in favor of the $115 million project will also be forced to deal with the effects of their decision. In the long run, they may be praised or they may be run out of town on a rail. For all of our sakes, I hope it's the former.
I would hate to see this issue put to a referendum. I can't imagine a more destructive and divisive outcome. A referendum would pit old against young, haves against have nots, neighbors against neighbors. I'm confident of what the result would be, but I'm equally confident that the process would be absolutely lethal to a community that demands and deserves so much more.
So in the end, Bill, I must put my faith in the people we have elected (as blind as it may be) to do the right thing. If I disagree with their decision or the process, I can deal with that. All that's left for me to say to them is please educate yourselves, listen, appreciate the enormity of task before you and its lasting impact on all sectors of our population. But above all, appreciate that buildings alone do not produce quality students, so please make a decision that best fosters and improves the education for every future generation in Mt. Lebanon.
I have little confidence in our architects Celli-Flynn Brennan. They muff the details on a regular basis - and often when not muffing - they're bluffing.
Monday night, Celli & Friends showed plans for the emperor's new clothes, but still didn't have a good handle on where he will park his carriage or his court will play tennis.
The real hitch with this project however, is that we have no one in a project leadership capacity - for the Board, Administration, Public or even the Architects to turn.
As well intended and competent in their own right the Board and Administration are - this is not their area of expertise.
This is a $100,000,000+, 50 year decision -- we should treat it as one.
I agree. If this appeared to be a well thought out decision and direct answers could be given, I'd be able to live with it, even if I didn't agree with the course of action.
However, everything in this decision seems to come with the "it just is" or "because we said so" answers. I'm sure they could come up with some statistics to try and justify the expense of a new high school for more students than are in the pipeline (even more so if you factor in the potential exodus following the monumental tax hike), but they haven't even put in the effort to do that. They're just running headlong at the brick wall and hoping they can knock it down.
To add insult to injury, we get to wake up this morning and read this in the P-G: "Bids for construction of a NEW (emphasis mine) high school on the campus of the EXISTING (emphasis mine again) Bethel Park facility were awarded at a special meeting last night, arriving $17 million less than projected. Total cost of the awarded bids to Mascaro Construction was $73,312,745. The project has a cap of $98 million."
For those wondering, Lebo is slightly bigger than Bethel in terms of enrollment, but certainly not $20 million bigger.
Bill, Greg:
I'll cast my no confidence vote too.
Bluffing and muffing seems to be acceptable. The last thing I'd call his presentations is inspiring.
Looking at the building renderings from Truang Le... and all the windows. If experience is a guide, in 20 years we're going to need a helluva a lot of 3" wide clear tape!
Dean Spahr
On August 27th we will have the 3rd day enrollment numbers. It will be interesting to see the exact number of high school students we have now that a senior class that is larger than the incoming 9th grade class has left the high school. Unless students have moved into the district we should have a lower enrollment in the high school than last year.
Those enrollment figures should be given to the architect so he knows the real enrollment instead of relying on outsourcing the PlanCon documents to a third party and not being able to properly answer capacity/enrollment question about the high school at a public meeting.
The Dirk Taylor Report was discussed with the architect but nothing was said about those suggestions from the district's structural engineer. Would you rather trust a building designed by a structural engineer or 9 folks who vote without any school design or construction management experience?
Here's a curious little article written by Mr. Celli himself (its on Celli's website) titled:
The Price Isn't Right
excerpt--
"The three basic pillars that guide the strategic planning for an institution are student acquisition, academics, and campus atmosphere (facilities and recreation). In the tuition-dependent institution, enrollment drives everything else. Without students, there can be no college. If you are a small college missing its enrollment numbers, then you likely have aging facilities, a small endowment, and, even if the quality of your academic programs has managed to keep up with the demands of the job market you are going to need more than just a nice looking student union to turn things around. Besides, a new building would take several years, and the president of the college I was speaking with needed results much sooner.
As we strolled the campus we discussed their options through the lens of facilities and architecture, but it disturbed me that this administrator and the hundreds of others I've talked to didn't consider how their basic pricing structure was hurting their efforts to attract and retain students. Why, I wondered, don't these multi-million dollar institutions see that if they don't innovate within their business operations, and quickly, they are going to be in the same crisis year after year?"
Though this article concerns small colleges and private institutions, I wonder if the same link can be made for the HS project?
Could the district's pricing structure (property taxes)
be hurting our efforts to attract and retain students????
Hmmm, anyone have thoughts?
Dean Spahr
In Mt. Lebanon the property taxes most parents pay don’t come close to covering the cost (tuition) of their first child. The second, third, and fourth child are on full scholarship from the 76% of those who don’t have children in school.
The assessed value of homes is frozen at 2002 values so the increase in cost per student will rise from over $13,000 in 2010 to over $19,000 in 2015 based on only a millage increase and perhaps an assessment increase that will dramatically affect a minority of the community who get a very large increase in home assessment. That is the way the re-assessment worked in 1994 and it was painful to many people.
The average assessment of 61 recent contingent sales in Mt. Lebanon was less than 65% of the listing price of the houses sold. If we get a court ordered reassessment there are new homebuyers who are in for a huge tax hike to pay for the District’s baseless Budget.
Why do I call it a baseless Budget? We are introducing a student-catering course into the high school curriculum. Dr. Sable was heavily criticized for wanting a hotel. This dumbing down of the curriculum is being financed by a grant from the Mt Lebanon Foundation for Education. The Board of that Foundation includes a superintendent, an assistant superintendent, and a current and former board member, and past presidents of PTA Council.
That use of space proves to me the high school is too large and the staff is too big. If I were a homebuyer and found out Mt Lebanon is teaching student catering and the cost per student is going to over $19,000 in five years I would not buy a home in Mt Lebanon.
Holy smokes, John. Ever take Home Economics when you were in high school?? How about typing? Or per chance woodshop?
Electives have always been part of the high school experience - and unique electives have always been part of the Mt. Lebanon high school experience. By the way, ever watch a school board meeting on TV? If so, you can thank the TV program at the high school (which I can guarantee you ain't cheap).
Get outside of the box John. There's a great big world out here.
Sorry, Dave, a catering course is more suitable to the Parkway West curriculum than it is to the academic curriculum in Mount Lebanon.
This school is already at the referendum debt limit. When I served on the Board we had a middle school building program, a reassessment, and a teacher contract negotiation all going on at the same time.
I won't wish a building program, a referendum, and a teacher contract negotiation on this school board all at once; they already have more than enough to deal with without extraneous curriculum and unneeded salary expense slipped into the academic environment under a Foundation grant instead of being approved by the School Board in advance as required by the School Code.
John, the catering program that you are so upset about is a program that the Special Education teachers devised for the students in their classes. And I believe that it was given a grant by the MLFE to do so. Students in the curriculum will operate their own catering business to provide baked goods and other refreshments for administrative and staff meetings. Students will manage the daily affairs of the business including processing orders, reading and following recipes, applying math and measurement skills and they will work on time and money management. So, what sounds like meaningless, non-academic fluff to you, is potentially life changing for others.
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