Proposed changes would reduce actual capacity of new high school.
By: Steve Rauscher
MONTGOMERY The Township Board of Education is expected to vote Oct. 22 on minor design changes for the new high school, aimed at controlling costs and jump-starting construction.
The changes, district officials say, are in response to rising construction costs and new demographic data.
The proposed changes to the school’s educational specifications how many classrooms, students, computers, bookshelves, etc. the school will hold would reduce its actual capacity from 2,200 to 2,100, according to Superintendent Stuart Schnur and Business Administrator Jim Strimple. The school’s functional capacity will remain about the same.
Actual capacity is the number of students a school can hold when all its facilities classrooms, cafeterias, libraries are filled. Functional capacity, typically 85 percent of actual capacity, reflects the number of students a school will realistically hold, given that a school’s classrooms, cafeterias and libraries are not always full, they explained.
District officials propose to eliminate four to six of the school’s 49 classrooms, but declined to comment fully on the changes. Mr. Strimple said he could release details when the board has had a chance to vote.
Classrooms for special-needs students would be built so that they can double as regular classrooms, they said.
Mr. Strimple said bids for the school’s construction may be higher than first anticipated because construction costs have risen since early 2000, when the district issued nearly $70 million in bonds to cover the cost of building the school.
"If the bids come in higher, then we’re going to have to go back and make changes anyway," he said. "In a sense, we’re trying to anticipate that. We have an obligation to stay within the amount of money the community approved."
The revised design also is intended to reflect new demographic data, Dr. Schnur said.
Last week, Dr. Schnur met with Township Administrator Donato Nieman and other officials to examine population growth predictions outlined in the Master Plan. The township’s population is expected to grow from about 18,000 to 21,000 and then stabilize in 2015, with most of the growth occurring in the next seven years.
Dr. Schnur said the corresponding enrollment increase at the high school would stabilize around 1,800 in 2008, slightly lower than the original predictions upon which the design for the new high school was based.
"We did a lot of demographic reviews and we saw that some things weren’t needed," he said. "We don’t want to overbuild, but we want to make sure we have room for all the kids."
The district hopes to begin building the school on the site of the former Lloyd McCorkle School for Boys on Route 601 in the spring. Construction is expected to take two years. Demolition of the existing buildings on the site is almost complete, said assistant to the superintendent Jack Rotter.

