As many as 16 planned renovations will cost so much money that St. Paul Public Schools might be better off building new schools, a consultant has found.

The school district in July hired Dallas-based Jacobs Engineering Group to join an external review of its facilities spending after the Pioneer Press reported cost estimates for 18 key projects had grown by $179 million since 2016.

In a report made public in October, Jacobs questioned why the district was planning to spend a decade renovating nearly every one of its 73 buildings when, in many cases, new schools wouldn’t cost much more.

“Were you aware that many of these projects are (more than) 80% of the cost to build new?” the report read.

District leaders say they haven’t taken the time to scrutinize that claim. But startling increases in the cost of the district’s rehab projects, as well as a persistent decline in enrollment, could give St. Paul reason to create a vastly different long-range construction plan than was set just three years ago.

Over the next four months, Jacobs and school district officials will tear up the district’s 10-year project list approved in 2016 and make a new five-year construction plan.

Through that process, Jacobs’ input regarding the high cost of renovation “will be taken into account,” Chief Operations Officer Jackie Turner said.

The Minnesota Department of Education advises districts to “seriously consider replacement of the facility” when rehab costs approach 60 percent of a new building.

The department’s planning guide says construction accounts for only 10 percent to 14 percent of the lifetime cost of a school building, with the rest coming from operations and maintenance.

“Taxpayers are best served when school boards view long-term building decisions in such a manner; considering all the costs of building ownership, not just construction costs,” the guide reads.

DATA KEPT PRIVATE

Exactly how St. Paul’s plans stack up against that recommendation is not clear.

Jacobs’ public report did not include a list of schools with cost comparisons for renovation and new construction.

When the Pioneer Press last month asked for data to support their “80 percent” claim, Jacobs principal Chappell Jordan said the district had that information but his firm was not authorized to provide it to reporters.

The school district for weeks has ignored the newspaper’s requests to make the cost comparisons available. Asked directly after Tuesday’s board meeting, Turner said she would not turn over the data.

“Jacobs did give the district that list, although I don’t feel comfortable releasing that list because that is Jacobs’, as external consultants, opinion that has not been validated by St. Paul Public Schools, our staff,” Turner said.

In the same meeting with reporters, Jordan said his firm found that 16 school renovations, mostly at elementary schools, would require at least half as much money as building a new school.

He said he was unsure whether those 16 all are future projects or included some of the 10 major renovations the district has completed or nearly completed since 2017.

He did say they included one project set to break ground next year — the preK-8 American Indian Magnet, whose renovation and expansion is expected to cost $53 million.

Also on that list was Bruce Vento Elementary, whose renovation since has been canceled, in part because of rising costs. That project was expected to cost $25 million as of last year and likely has gotten more costly since.

Jordan cautioned that the decision to renovate or rebuild is not a simple calculation.

“There are a ton of reasons why you would or you wouldn’t,” he said.

During the school board meeting Tuesday, board member Steve Marchese pressed staff to explain why American Indian Magnet was moving forward despite the high price tag.

District officials said staff feel strongly about having a school on the Dayton’s Bluff property and that city zoning rules don’t give the district enough room to build a new school on the same site.

Bruce Vento, by contrast, is “one of our very few sites” where the district could build a new school without disturbing the old one, facilities director Tom Parent said. The district will decide in the coming months what to do with the Payne-Phalen school.

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St. Paul district to wait on reopening schools, citing lack of staff Another high-cost renovation at Frost Lake Elementary is set to break ground next year. At $36 million, it’s just several million dollars short of what it might cost to build a new school.

A new elementary school in St. Paul should cost $40 million to $45 million, Jordan said Tuesday.

A new middle school would be around $72 million and a high school $160 million, Parent said.

NEW PLAN COMING

Since nearly quadrupling its annual facilities spending in 2016, from $30 million to $112 million, the school district has substantially completed 10 large projects. It has not publicly detailed the final costs of that work.

But at least four elementary school renovations in recent years have cost more than $20 million, according to school board and Minnesota Department of Education records.

Until recently, the district was preparing for two more costly elementary school renovations: an estimated $36 million at Obama Elementary and $26 million at the lower campus of Farnsworth Aerospace.

Those and others are on hold now as the district, at Jacobs’ recommendation, looks to “re-initiate” its long-term facilities planning. Jacobs will stay on through June after securing a second contract with the district, worth $147,000, Turner said; that’s in addition to their initial $157,500 consulting deal.

By April, the school district expects to have a new five-year project list that could look far different from the schedule the school board approved in October 2018.

“A lot’s changed in 16 months,” Parent said Tuesday.

Given the increased construction costs, the district may have to cut back on the amount of work it’s doing or keep raising taxes beyond its initial 10-year target.

CLOSE A SCHOOL?

One possibility could be closing one or more schools, which the school board hasn’t discussed since June 2016. That’s when a 4-3 vote saved Galtier Elementary from closure, overruling then-superintendent Valeria Silva, whose contract was bought out during that same meeting.

All three board members who favored closing Galtier will be off the board by next month. And three of the four who voted to keep it open still will be in office: Marchese, Zuki Ellis and John Brodrick.

Since 2016, however, the district’s schools have only grown emptier as families increasingly opt for charter schools and nearby school districts.

Preliminary district figures show the number of preK-12 students at traditional school locations has dropped by about 2,000 in the past four years. The board is expected to hear a detailed enrollment report this week.

As of this month, St. Paul’s smallest elementary schools by enrollment are:

Cherokee Heights, 218 students

Galtier, 245

Highwood Hills, 252

Hamline, 283

Maxfield, 284

During a board meeting last month, Superintendent Joe Gothard hinted that something has to change. Having several schools with fewer than 300 students, he said, is “a concern for staffing and academics.”

‘SO EXPENSIVE’

Christine Tucci Osorio, who was an administrator in the St. Paul district until 2015, said in an interview that the St. Paul district would be better off with fewer schools.

“With Minneapolis and St. Paul, a core problem is there are so many little schools and they’re so expensive to run,” she said Thursday. “If they really want to save those districts, they’ll have to right-size them.” Related Articles St. Paul district to wait on reopening schools, citing lack of staff

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Now superintendent for North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale, Tucci Osorio is leading her own district-wide makeover that looks far different from St. Paul’s. While expanding seven buildings, she’s also building two new schools and closing four.

She said building renovations get expensive fast, from required updates to meet new building codes to unexpected asbestos discoveries and core elements like gyms, cafeterias and ventilation systems that can’t handle a new wing of students.

“What we learned with these old buildings is the way they were designed makes it so expensive” to renovate, she said.