Batavia school district could replace four elementary schools in new master facilities plan

Batavia school district officials have outlined the next steps of its “Building Our Future Together” master facilities plan, which may involve the replacement of four of the district’s oldest buildings, which are Alice Gustafson, J.B. Nelson, H.C. Storm and Louise White elementary schools.

According to Superintendent Lisa Hichens, a total of 90 community members attended the four engagement sessions held in February and March to present information to the community and gather feedback. The sessions touched on topics ranging from funding options to new ways facilities could be modernized.

The final engagement session was held on March 24 at Rotolo Middle School, and focused on bringing together all the information from the previous sessions, according to meeting documents.

“People really needed us to explain in great detail why it was more fiscally sound and makes more sense to rebuild some of our schools rather than renovate,” Hichens said. “So even though this plan touches all eight schools, people needed to understand why rebuilding makes more sense at four of our schools.”

According to meeting documents, Alice Gustafson was the only one of the four schools that would be more costly to replace than renovate. The total renovation cost would be $169.2 million, opposed to a total rebuilding cost of $135.3 million for all four schools.

Issues with the four elementary schools include inadequate accessibility, secure entrances, roof conditions and a lack of collaborative work environments, according to meeting documents.

“What we’re hearing from the community is that ‘we want to keep our eight schools; we don’t want to decrease the number of schools.’ And we want to have the least impact on our students during construction.’” Hichens said. “The school district also has the goal of not displacing students.”

Hichens said that district staff reintroduced the three funding options at the meeting.

Funding Option A would be substantially cheaper than Options B and C but would only include minor improvements to school facilities, according to meeting documents.

“In that second session and every session after that, it became really clear that Option A, even if it would actually put money back in the taxpayer’s pocket, was not the preferred option,” Hichens said. “Almost unanimously people saw the need for us to continue to maintain and improve our buildings through either Option B or Option C.”

“So even though there wasn’t consensus about which of those options, we were surprised that people almost unanimously picked Options B and C over A,” Hichens said.

Option B would only see H.C. Storm and Louise White Elementary fully replaced, whereas Option C would all four schools replaced.

“For Option B, people were surprised that there was an option that allowed us to do quite a bit of work without increasing taxes,” Hichens said.

Meeting documents stated that Funding Option C, which includes the most improvements, is the only option that would increase taxes.

Hichens said that one of the biggest challenges for the community engagement sessions was Batavia residents with no district ties.

“We did a lot of outreach to try to find those people who aren’t currently connected to the schools to ask them to engage,” she said. “I think that we got a pretty good turnout eventually. By the end we got people talking. Like I said, that was our goal to have everybody talking. I think it took a while, but it finally got there.”

The architectural firm DLR Group has assisted in the development of the facilities plan since 2018.

Parents and community members will have a chance to see some of the concerns with J.B. Nelson School and Rotolo Middle School during an April 27 open house at both schools.

“What we’re in the process of doing now is taking the ten top key ideas that came from these sessions, what was most important for the community to learn and see inside these buildings,” said Holly Deitchman, district communications manager. “What we’re doing is we’re going out to the schools that best give a picture of what those challenges are currently within the buildings.”

The district also plans to create videos comparing the older and more modern schools, Deitchman said.

“We’re going to try and give that so they don’t have to go to every school to see this stuff. Just to give them an understanding of what the current state of our facilities is,” Deitchman said.

Hichens said that the district is planning to conduct another survey in early May.

“We do know that what we asked of people was a pretty big time commitment,” Hichens said. “The survey is a community-wide survey, and that will help the board make their final decisions.”

The findings from all feedback sessions, open house events and the survey will be presented at the Board of Education meeting on May 24.

“The Board of Education has no intent of putting something on the ballot that does not reflect what the community wants,” Hichens said.

A final decision on the plan will be made by the school board in July, Hichens said.