No new CPS classrooms until end of '09

COLUMBUS -- Lost Creek Elementary School will be welcoming more students next year, but not as quickly as Columbus Public Schools officials had hoped when they decided to add six classrooms at the school.

The CPS Board of Education OK’d the school expansion adding a set of kindergarten to fifth-grade classrooms Monday evening, but the new space won’t be ready for students until at least the end of 2009.

District officials have been told that previous plans to have the new classrooms ready for students when school starts next fall were “too ambitious,’’ CPS Superintendent Paul Hillyer said during Monday’s meeting of the school board.

The $1.7 million Lost Creek expansion school expansion next year would be the second major project at the school in the past three years.

Adding a full track of classrooms at Lost Creek next year is unlike the construction project the board approved for the school in 2007, said Dan Keiter, architect with RVW Inc. of Columbus.

In 2007, a $1.45 million project at Lost Creek included a 6,800 square-foot gymnasium with high school-sized basketball and volleyball courts, general building and educational storage and a physical education office and storage.

The remodeling portion of the project included a new kitchen, exterior windows and roof, replacement of interior doors, floor finishes in corridors and classrooms and lavatories in the original building area toilets. The upgrades also include sinks and countertops, a new reading room and improved entrance security.

The bulk of the 2007 Lost Creek project was essentially “one large room” and it took eight or nine months to complete, Keiter said. A new school addition could not be completed during the summer, he said.

“Realistically, the project could be done closer to December or January,’’ Keiter told the board.

Work on the expansion could be started on the west side of the project, with crews working eastward toward the existing school building, to minimize disruptions while classes are in session, he said.

The new Lost Creek project is part of the board’s plan for dealing with swelling enrollment at the district’s five elementary schools.

Expansion projects at Centennial and North Park elementary schools have been suggested for 2010.

Kindergarten expansion projects at North Park, Centennial and Emerson schools, with a price tag of $1.1 million, were completed this summer. Kindergarten enrollment totaled nearly 320 students this fall and is expected to jump to about 350 next year.

The elementary school expansions are a portion of the board’s overall look at facilities aimed at mapping the district’s future through at least 2020.

The board is also eyeing a new school for seventh- and eighth-graders, a facelift of the current middle school and a shift of fifth-graders to that revamped facility to address the enrollment bulge.

In other business, the board set the district’s general, building and bond fund tax levies for the $31.16 million budget approved last month for the 2008-09 school year.

The district’s general fund levy would be .9516 for the general fund, 0.03925 for the building fund and .1711 for the bond fund. The overall levy is 1.162, down from 1.172 last year.

That means the owner of a $100,000 home would have a total school tax bill of $1,162 for 2008-09.