Lapeer Community Schools will spend at least $2.4 Million on closed buildings

[William Gavette]

As we all know, things could be better for our schools, and that especially applies to Lapeer Community Schools. Here we are in 2012 with some major decisions to address in dealing with our long term future, but to do that we must know how we have arrived where we are today. We are facing an over 8 million dollar deficit that MUST be addressed this year. This comes on the heals of our district taking 2.7 million dollars last year out of our rainy day fund rather than make the hard choices that we now have no choice but to deal with.

We are also told by the district that our enrollment numbers are down for many reasons, but primarily that many folks have left the district and state for greener pastures and people are not having babies like they used to. While this is all true, would it trouble you as it does me to know that we had very solid indicators that we would would be at our current student numbers where as far back as 2006?

Whether by deliberate choice or just being overlooked, it is my belief that the LCS Administration and Board either ignored the warning signs or didn't take the time to properly look at the information we had available. To predict where a districts student numbers will be and to make the best decisions possible, every school district uses a firm to make future projections of enrollment. These are based on county birthrates and other predictors that can very accurately determine what future student numbers will be. Our enrollment projections in the past have been very reliable. These projections are possible because, by counting the number of preschoolers from newborn to 5 years old, it is possible to make an a estimate of how many kids will be in upcoming kindergarten classes.

Lapeer Community Schools uses Stanfred Consultants to access the future enrollment projections for our district. In December of 2006, the winter BEFORE we passed the bond for our middle schools and upgrades to the elementary buildings as well as technology, the most likely estimates ranged from 5992 on the low end, to 6187 on the high end. Although these are only projections, they have historically been very accurate, especially the "1.50 Standard". This estimate in particular was 6025 students for the 2011-12 year. Again, this was from Dec. 2006. In plain English, that means that in 2006, our student projections were very close to where we actually are and this is long before we knew of the 2008 downturn. You can find the Dec. 2006 projections here. L.C.S. had another set of projections prepared in September of 2010. If these numbers hold out, we will be someplace around 5200 students in L.C.S. in the 2014-15 school year.

It is only possible to project out 5 years and the last new estimate was done in 2010. Anything past the 2014-15 school year is purely a guess on the part of our district. Another projection will have to be done in order to get a better estimate of just how many students we will have in our district in the future beyond 2015. Here are the Sept. 2010 projections.

What is so troubling, that that fact that the district and board had this information BEFORE we spent significant sums of money on these 2 buildings (Maple Grove and Seaton), that were just voted to be closed at the end of this year. While we were all aware that Seaton was not looking good with the numbers, most people are not aware of just how much our district has spent on our newly closed buildings.

Maple Grove has had the largest amount of money spent of the buildings. In that building alone, we have spent $1,018,991 just in sinking fund money. in 2006, we spent $887,000 for enlarging the cafeteria to accommodate the additional students from the closing of Attica, and replacing the boiler in 2008 we spent $131,000. These funds were from the sinking fund. Additionally, we have spent $908,475 dollars in Bond money. That is a total of $1,927,466 in total dollars just at Maple Grove.

At Seaton we have spent $341,000 in Bond money. Elba has had $110,000 in Bond money. Hadley had the least at $69,837. The bottom line is that we have spent a combined total of $1,430,320 in bond money in buildings that soon to be or already closed buildings. Our district is required by law to pay interest on the our bond of between 4% and 5.25%. This means that this poorly spent money will cost our kids between$2,458,285 and $2,843,380 over the coarse of the 30 years ending in 2037. You can viewthe spent bond summary here concerning these closed or soon to close buildings to see for yourself what the district says they have put into Maple Grove, Seaton, Hadley, and Elba. The fact that we are in a depressed real estate market makes it plainly evident that just selling these buildings may not be the best coarse of action. Maple Grove has an investment almost 2 Million dollars since 2006 Since all of these buildings are the property and assets of our children, we should proceed very carefully and cautiously to make sure we are doing what is best to minimize any loss and where possible,and to try to maximize any profit from the sale and marketing of these properties where we can.

We must also make sure that we learn from our past mistakes. When White Junior High school was closed in the mid 90's, a decision was made to re-purpose that building for administration offices, and for a community center. Its main purpose was no longer education. Under Michigan law, as long as a school building's primary purpose is education, no matter how old the building is, it does not have to upgrade all of the subsequent changes in construction codes that happen with time. As long as it is safe, it is grandfathered in. Any building that has previously been a school, and has had its primary use changed away from education, must be totally re-coded and fully upgraded to current building code. In other words, White lost its grandfathered status. If LCS would have wanted to try to reopen White as a school, it would have had to be fully upgraded to today's building standards. This made White useless as a school building.

I mention this because we will potentially run into the same issues with our recently closed buildings. Specifically my concern is Maple Grove, as we have much more money invested in this building than we do the other buildings. I recently spoke to Mr. Todd Cordell. He is one of the top guys in the Michigan Bureau of Construction Codes. This is the agency that must certify our schools for use by the public. I was told that if we change the main purpose of Maple Grove or ANY of our closed buildings away from education, say like renting a building out, or using them for any type of community centers, those buildings, like White, would lose their grandfathered status. The core of Maple Grove was built in 1964. I am sure that the others buildings are approximately the same age of older. We must make sure that if we re-purpose a closed building that we have done a assessment to see what the long term costs would be if we intend on ever possibly re-opening any of these closed buildings BEFORE we re-purpose the building. This was not done in the past with White and we must insist that the LCS Administration and Board do everything possible to insure that we make the best decisions for the long term use of these facilities. Any focus groups deciding long term future for our closed buildings will need to know this information in order to make good decisions on how to move forward with dealing with these closed buildings.

While we all know that we continue to lose students, the reality is that we do not know what the future holds. We had an unexpected gain of students this past year. Were it not for those additional kids, our numbers would be even lower. If the economy picks up in Michigan, we could see things start to turn around. What ever the future holds, we need to know that those we have elected to our school board to watch over and protect our children are going to do their homework and ask the tough, and sometimes unpopular, questions. Our administrators need to make sure that our kids are the top priority. We cannot continue to throw away our kid's money. The time to be vigilant is now.