School development plans accelerate in Wellington

By Gary Raham
Wellington Correspondent

As three developers in seven different housing projects around Wellington raise homes often purchased by young, growing families, residents want answers about how Poudre School District will meet needs for local educational facilities.

PSD recently built Zach and Bacon elementary schools in Fort Collins and has plans for a junior high in the southeast part of the city. There is enough money in an existing bond issue for an elementary school in Wellington and the possibility of funding a junior high, depending on the findings of a new community committee the district hopes to help organize by early May.

At an April 6 meeting in Wellington with more than 50 parents, teachers and community members, school representatives discussed some options. Shannon Bingham, of the Boulder firm Western Demographics Inc., which projects numbers for district growth, suggested three colorful scenarios for school development and invited community members to provide other options.

Scenario Red would fill the present Eyestone Elementary School with kindergarten through third grade and convert the existing junior high to an intermediate school with grades four through six. A new junior high would have to be built on another site.

Scenario Blue would build a new elementary in "south Wellington" and an addition to the present junior high.

Scenario Green would build an elementary school in the south part of town, convert Wellington Junior High to grades seven and eight only and transition the ninth grade to high school in Fort Collins.

Bill Franzen, PSD's operations executive director, said later that of 45 surveys turned in, "there seemed to be a preference for Scenario Red by roughly a 2-to-1 margin." Survey participants seemed split on the value of Scenario Blue and opposed to Scenario Green by 2-to-1.

Community members did offer other suggestions, including one tentatively labeled Scenario Yellow that would build a combined junior high and high school for about 600 students. Others asked about the possibilities for charter schools, which are becoming more prevalent.

Franzen said the next step will be to set up a committee within the community to review the results, offer more input from various points of view and decide on a course of action. PSD will help set this in motion and solicit input from parents, teachers, town government and others.

Part of the debate over schools that has developed in recent months revolves around how fast the town will grow. Bingham said he has developed a "collective marketing reduction factor" which typically reduces developers' population estimates by half or a third. Each home is assigned a certain fraction that estimates the number of students at elementary, middle school or high school levels.

Other issues involve developing an intergovernmental agreement between PSD and Wellington that will ultimately impact housing costs. (See related story).

Some community members expressed concerns about whether PSD's template for schools fits the small-town character of Wellington. Also, several town board members have expressed a desire that money raised locally be used for local schools.

Currently, all money collected from developers goes into a central pool that can be used to build schools anywhere in the district. "If PSD had to buy land tomorrow (to build a school in Wellington) it would come from this fund," Franzen said. Small towns would find it difficult to build comparable schools otherwise, he added.

Sometime between 2006 and 2008 Wellington's housing boom will result in the construction of one or two community schools to educate its new citizens. How fast schools are built will partly depend on which scenario the local committee supports. The committee's work must start soon, however, as it takes 18 to 24 months to build an elementary school.

Prior to the April meeting, Franzen expressed the desire to improve communication between PSD and the Wellington community, and he was generally pleased with the feedback from a survey passed out at the meeting. Twenty-nine people thought Poudre representatives did either an excellent or good job in "presenting appropriate data" at the meeting. One person thought they did a poor job. Twenty-five left with either an excellent or good impression of the meeting.