Cincinnati Embarks on Ten-Year Plan

Michael L. Burson is director of facilities at Cincinnati Public Schools, a 40,000-student urban district embarking on a 10-year, four-phase $985 million master plan. The district is the state’s third largest with 80 schools and covers an area of about 90 square miles. The average age of the district’s buildings is 60 years, and the oldest active building was constructed in 1876. Only five schools have central air conditioning, and 129 classrooms are housed in temporary buildings. The 10-year facilities plan will reduce the number of schools to 66 and reduce the GSF by approximately 800,000. The master plan will result in 35 brand new buildings and 31 renovations. The district’s elementary configuration is pre-K-8. The new and renovated elementary schools will range in student size from 350, 450, 550, and 650, with one 750. The high school design generally is for one or more small, 600-student independent schools to share a large campus. Mr. Burson holds a degree in architecture. He worked for the school district from 1975 to 1990, and then decided to return to be a part of its facilities renewal program.

Hava Leisner: Are most projects under the $985 million plan renovations or new construction?

Michael Burson: In our case, we work with the state to develop the plan. They come in, they do enrollment projections, they do building condition assessments of all your buildings, and then you use that data to determine which buildings you are going to keep and which buildings you need to replace. But it just happens in this case most of the high schools ended up being candidates for renovations.

HL: Are these the high schools from the 1920s?

MB: Most of them, yes. The one high school that we are replacing was built at the end of the 50s. But our buildings from the 20s are being renovated. I guess the construction that was being done 40 years ago was not farsighted; it just does not allow enough flexibility for us to adapt those buildings today.

HL: Are you looking to preserve the historical façades?

MB: Absolutely. We have money for renovation, which is separate from restoration. But as we go into these buildings, for instance with Withrow, we have a very active alumni association that pledged $500,000 for the Withrow project. Using a program available through the federal government, we could take their $500,000 and get a 9-to-1 match of $5 million in bonding capacity to add to the project. So what we’re doing is using those funds and any additional funds that are contributed by other partners to go specifically towards restoration of certain features that are not included in the base project budget.

We have another high school, Hughes, that is going to be up for renovation in segment two and already that alumni association has been working with us identifying what kind of things are going to be included in our budget and what kinds of things will not be. There are some beautiful leaded-glass windows in the library that just can’t be a part of the renovation, so that group, hopefully, is going to do some special fund raising to allow us to go in and restore the leaded-glass windows.

Our efforts are really a very big partnership process that involves the state, of course, and the guidelines in which we work with the state, and then community partners that support the schools, the individual schools, and what kind of resources they can bring to the table.

HL: What kinds of facilities are optimal for Cincinnati’s urban students?

MB: The community decided that they wanted to support a vertical teaming approach to education. They also decided that our buildings would be pre-school through eighth grade. So we don’t have middle schools or junior high schools anymore. We only have elementary schools and secondary schools.

In our high schools, we’ve been experimenting with high school redesign and we’ve taken our large campuses, subdivided them into smaller schools of 600 each that have separate administrations. We are sharing things like the gym and lunchroom but the schools have been redesigned for about two years now. And it is just a new project, waiting to see how it goes.

One thing that is unique about all of our new elementary schools is that they are built around the concept of a standard-based model. We are not building schools that have classrooms off of double loaded-corridors. We have a standard base model, which we refer to as a pod; it is a family of four classrooms around a shared space called an extended learning area.

There is a pullout space, each one of those extended learning areas has individual student restrooms and staff restrooms right in the extended learning area. These buildings are very efficient, there is very little hallway in them because of the way we’re designing them. But you have this family of students and teachers who can be together, as a kids move through those grade levels, in that pod. And they are sharing this extended learning space, which is not another classroom but is equipped as a classroom; it has all the data ports, a sink, and drinking fountain, and some casework, just like in a classroom. They can be there for the entire time except when they go to art and music and PE and lunch.

That is something we worked very hard to be able to afford within the state program. We made some sacrifices but it’s worked out for us now. When we sit down to plan a building we already have the program that we hand right to the architect. We have a kit of parts. We have 13 buildings now and the design is pretty much completed. The architectural foundation in Cincinnati, which is connected with the AIA chapter there, sponsored a show and we brought in all the architects with these first 13 designs and it was amazing when people looked at the variation that we’ve been able to produce. Each project has its own architect, but they are all given the same amount of square footage and the same number of rooms.

HL: What is the square footage?

MB: For our most efficient buildings, it is a 650-student elementary school that is about 85,000 square feet.

HL: You then know how many pods based on the square footage?

MB: Exactly. The 650 [student school] has seven pods, and then you are dropping 100 students each, so you drop one pod for each size building. We have an 18-to-1 student teacher ratio in preschool through third grade pods. It is based on 90 students and five staff members.

HL: What are state mandates regarding classroom size?

MB: The state standard is 900 square feet, they figure a classroom based on 25 students. They allow you 10 percent up or down. You are only allowed a 10 percent up or down in the primary grades, I believe. But we have opted not to exercise that. We’re making all our rooms 900 square feet, except for our preschool through kindergarten pods, those are 1,080 square feet. But all of our classrooms from grades four to 12 are going to be 900 square feet.

HL: Now, you were quick to tell me these schools are not prototypes.

MB: Correct. We call them a kit of parts. Each school planning team tells us which projects they are interested in and we do a short list. We then go out with the school planning team that is set up-teachers, principal, community people, parents, hopefully some students-we sit them down, they select the architect for their project from our list of pre-qualified architects, and then they work with that architect to actually take the kit of parts and arrange it how it best works on their site and their community. The building should be designed to reflect the flavor of the community around it.

HL: So part of the kit of parts would be the 650 square feet equals seven pods.

MB: Exactly. Everything is prescribed. We could not have a 10-year plan with a number on it, $985 million, if we had not really worked this out for every building before we finalized the plan.

HL: Is land a real issue in Cincinnati?

MB: Yes. Because the way our plan was designed for four phases, the tough stuff is in the first phase, where we need to buy new sites. We put that in the first phase because it allows kids to stay in their old buildings while we build new ones on the other site and then they can move in the second phase. They can move into the new building and we can use their old building as temporary housing for other schools.

But yes, acquiring the land has proven to be the toughest part. And some projects have been delayed now because of that, but our board has authorized imminent domain in a couple cases. I think people are beginning to understand we are really serious about this. We are going to move forward and do whatever we have to do.

HL: Are most of your facilities built-up. Do you have a lot of two- and three-story schools in Cincinnati?

MB: Some two- and three-stories. Cincinnati is a very hilly place and so a lot of the sites just naturally lend themselves to that. And when they are smaller than what we would like to see, then we take advantage of that and make them three stories, and that takes up less footprint on the site. So far, out of all the buildings, 17 in the first segment, only one of them has been a one-story design. It is a 450 [student] school. It is a site that’s got plenty of land, so we were able to do that.

HL: In terms of modernization and upgrades, are there certain things that come up?

MB: I like the term modernization. That is exactly the term that the state uses. The older buildings from the 20s, without a doubt they are all getting new windows. We are going to tear open walls. We are going to go in and replace piping and electrical.

We are experimenting with some techniques in our first high school renovation project to provide central air conditioning without having to install ductwork throughout the building to destroy the old plaster ceilings.

The windows are probably the most costly and one of the most important features because that is where we have not been able to maintain a regular exterior painting program. So if you have exterior wood windows or steel even, their condition just deteriorates if you are not able to paint them. So that is going to be a big part of the work that we do.

We also have to prepare ourselves. When you have only five buildings with central air, you just know that your utility bills on these new buildings are going to be tremendous compared to what we pay today.