Seckman Middle School students should feel a little more comfortable in class next school year.
Fox C-6 Board of Education members voted unanimously Dec. 12 to award an $863,966 contract to Integrated Facilities Services of Fenton to replace the HVAC at the school, 2840 Seckman Road, in Imperial.
The company submitted the lowest of four bids for the project, according to school board documents.
Superintendent Paul Fregeau said the work is expected to start after the end of this school year and be completed before the start of the 2024-2025 school year.
School officials used information from a recently developed facility master plan to schedule the improvement project at Seckman Middle.
Fox officials hired Cordogan Clark, a St. Louis architecture, engineering and construction firm, in August 2022 to create the plan.
The district paid the firm $94,000 to assess each of its buildings and demographics within Fox’s boundaries to predict future student enrollment numbers and to develop the plan, which was presented to the board this past August.
“It is a gamechanger for the district that we have that data (from the master plan) moving forward,” Fregeau said.
Seckman Middle
According to that plan, the two schools most in need of new HVAC equipment were Seckman Middle and Meramec Heights Elementary, 1340 W. Outer 21 Road, between Arnold and Fenton.
Fregeau said high temperatures at the start of this school year caused Seckman Middle’s HVAC to overload and forced the district to bring in portable cooling devices for parts of the building.
District officials said the HVAC unit at Seckman Middle is more than 20 years old.
“We had to move some kids around because certain parts of the building did not have air conditioning. Seckman Middle and Meramec Heights were two tough ones, but Seckman Middle was much worse,” Fregeau said. “If the kids are not comfortable they are not going to have the cognitive development that we need for them to learn. They have to be comfortable for them to focus.”
The HVAC unit is the first of four capital improvement projects the district plans to take on next summer.
Director of Maintenance Kevin Piel said the board also will be asked to approve roofing projects at Meramec Heights and Clyde Hamrick elementary schools and an asphalt replacement project at the Seckman campus in Imperial, which includes not only the middle school, but also a high school and elementary school.
Chief financial officer Amy Vandevender said the district has $4.3 million budgeted for those upcoming capital improvement projects.
She also said Fox plans to set aside $5 million in its capital improvement funds for emergency repairs.
“That is part of the budgeting process,” Fregeau said. “You are always going to have a placeholder for unanticipated things, and you have a planned schedule as well. That is part of Amy’s and Kevin’s work moving forward.”
Master plan
Along with assessing the needs at the Fox district’s buildings, the plan predicts future student enrollment at the various schools.
Cordogan Clark’s findings show the district can expect enrollment to decrease by about 1,000 students over the next 10 years.
The plan also shows that while most schools have proper classroom sizes for students, nearly every building is short on space in common areas, such as cafeterias, gyms and media centers or libraries.
Fregeau said the part of the master facility plan district officials first examined was the facility conditions index (FCI), which assesses the condition of each school building and Rickman Auditorium and projects how much money is needed to improve each facility for continued use compared to replacing it.
The FCI shows it would cost the district nearly as much money to renovate, repair and expand Fox, Ridgewood and Seckman middle schools and Clyde Hamrick, Meramec Heights, Rockport Heights and Seckman elementary schools as it would to replace those schools with new buildings.
According to Cordogan Clark, the Fox district would need to spend between $40.3 and $48.4 million to continue using Fox Middle; between $39.2 to $47 million to continue using Ridgewood Middle and between $49.3 and $59.1 million to continue using Seckman Middle.
The plan estimates it would cost $49.9 million to replace Fox Middle, $49.5 million to replace Ridgewood Middle and $58.1 million to replace Seckman Middle.
Cordogan Clark also projects the district spending between $22.9 and $27.5 million to continue using Clyde Hamrick Elementary, between $26.8 and $32.2 million to continue using Meramec Heights Elementary, between $27.4 and $32.9 million to continue using Rockport Heights Elementary and between $33.4 to $40 million to continue to use Seckman Elementary.
The plan also estimates it would cost about $27.4 million to replace Clyde Hamrick, approximately $34.8 million to replace Meramec Heights, about $32.1 million to replace Rockport Heights and approximately $38.7 million to replace Seckman Elementary.
The plan included the new addition nearing completion at Meramec Heights.
The district is paying S.M. Wilson & Co. $13,357,000 to construct additions at Meramec Heights and Antonia elementary schools and is funding those projects with a $40 million bond issue voters approved in June 2020.
The master plan also includes information about how much space is used by each student and the ideal percentage of gross utilization – or students per building square footage – which is 95 percent for elementary schools, 85 percent for middle schools and 80 percent for high schools.
Cordogan Clark said Hodge Elementary (at 85 percent), Meramec Heights Elementary (at 86 percent) and Simpson Elementary (at 99 percent) are the district’s only schools that don’t exceed the 100 percent student utilization rate, based on 2022-2023 enrollment numbers.
However, the plan projects that in 10 years, Guffey and Simpson elementary schools and Ridgewood Middle will be the only buildings over 100 percent student utilization.
“The gross utilization speaks to the common space needs,” Fregeau said. “The projected utilization tells you what our class sizes are like and what enrollment is going to do in the buildings. The facility condition index tells you the amount of investment the district would have to entail to keep the building open and viable.”
Fregeau said the numbers shown in the presentation do not necessarily mean Fox will need to look at closing school buildings with low enrollment or redrawing boundary lines to relieve congestion at schools with large enrollment.
“You first have to look at the facility condition index and how much you are going to need to spend to keep that building viable as students come in,” he said. “You have to look at projected utilization, the size of the classrooms, the media centers, libraries, cafeterias, gyms and multi-purpose centers. You overlay that with transportation. There are a lot of things to consider. You can’t just redraw boundary lines, especially in today’s world when you have a limit on resources for your transportation.”