Contractors for the Scotts Valley Unified School District this week began assembly of the first of 10 new portable classrooms at the Scotts Valley Middle School.
Last weekend they removed all of the outdoor basketball goals to make room for the new classroom buildings.
The work marked the small first steps of a two-year construction and renovation project first approved by voters two years ago, authorizing up to $35 million in bonds.
The Scotts Valley Unified School District is proceeding optimistically to move forward with site preparation for the complex project, despite new uncertainties revealed at a district Board of Trustees meeting this week.
“I’m thrilled at the update, and I’m optimistic,” said board president Michael Shulman. He said he wants to “hit the ground running,” once the uncertainties are resolved in the next six months.
He and other board members, plus about 30 people in the audience on Tuesday that included some of Shulman’s political opponents in the upcoming trustee election, heard a 90-minute presentation that detailed the scrambling that has been going on in the past few months to try and keep the Middle School project on track.
Architects and school officials said Tuesday that a late 2018 completion date, which was announced last year, still is possible, with some phases completed earlier.
That means that current fifth graders could start in new middle school classrooms as early as next fall.
Current third graders could see an entirely new Middle School campus by the middle of their sixth grade year.
Between now and then, school officials, architects and contractors will be “balancing spinning plates,” as architect Monique Wood, of CAW Architects described it on Tuesday.
Here are the “spinning plates,” all with new unknowns:
The Mt. Hermon June Beetle, or polyphylla barbata, a little scarab whose only habitat in the entire planet is in Santa Cruz County. This designated endangered specie continues to stall final approval of the Middle School project.
The beetle, which Scotts Valley School Superintendent Tanja Krause affectionately calls simply “June” spends most of its life as a larva in the sandy soil of Scotts Valley and the Zayante Creek watershed. It emerges from the dirt for only a few months, May through September, to mate.
In August, entomologists found these beetles in dirt throughout the Middle School campus. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Division must sign off on the district’s plans to create new, enhanced June Beetle habitat in the Zayante Creek watershed, and to take steps to disturb the local beetle larvae as little as possible during construction. “We are going to have to cover June with dirt every night at bedtime,” said Krause.
That approval is expected in April.
Perhaps the district’s biggest hurdle is a $6 million gap between the approved bond money and the actual estimated cost of the project. District planners have laid the groundwork for getting $5.76 million from the $9 billion Proposition 51 on the Nov. 8 ballot. They can’t actually apply for that money until the beetle issue is finally resolved next spring, but are optimistic Scotts Valley will qualify – IF the bond issue is approved by California voters.
Architects on Tuesday reported some good news, that the district also is likely to get $1.36 million in “seismic funding” from the state, money that could be available next summer after the June Beetle plan is approved.
The other new development this summer was a new state law, in effect in January, that places significant new requirements on California school districts that use “lease-leaseback” strategies avoid low-bidder requirements.
Scotts Valley had such an agreement with Blach Construction, but now will have to develop a new Request for Proposals incorporating the state’s new bidding requirements using a “best-value” procedure, and open it up to contractors again.
Krause said she will fast-track this process and expects the school board to approve the new bid documents at its December meeting.
