Editor’s Note — This is the first of a three-part series detailing the bond question that Ardmore City Schools has placed on the April 1 ballot.
Ardmore City Schools Superintendent Andy Davis has plenty of experience navigating the maintenance issues that come with the district’s high school building.
Davis joined the district as an assistant high school principal and also served as the high school principal during a four-year period, prior to being promoted to the administration building.
“The leaks out of nowhere, the foundation issues, while running security drills, there is no place for the kids to get out of the line of sight because of all the glass,” Davis said. “There are constant issues with drainage backups, collapsing lines, drainage lines and water line breaks. Just the infrastructure of the school was going downhill and at that time, I was new here and trying to build a new high school was not in anybody’s mind.”
Davis recalls the district began having a robust conversation about the state of the high school building on Aug. 6, 2022. Conversations centered around the cost of making improvements and that was when the planning and assessment of the building began.
The cost of doing business
In the 1980’s Tom Hanks starred in a movie called the money pit, a story about attempting to renovate a home. While it may be extreme to call the high school a money pit, keeping it in working order has been expensive.
From Fiscal Year 2021 to Fiscal Year 2025, repair and maintenance has totaled $293,252 at the high school compared to $319,470 for all other district buildings combined according to ACS figures. Data also shows that repair costs continue to rise.
The high school has a geothermal system placed on the roof for its cooling and heating needs that Davis described as outdated. He said the old roof is not structurally sound as it should be to keep the water out. So, when there is a leak, the water comes right in the building, which Davis said happens a lot.
“Once we do repair a leak, it moves around to other baby leaks,” Superintendent Assistant Morgan Manley said.
The leaks vary from one-inch lines to the four-inch line, which is a massive problem.
“There is no drainage up there for it to run off or get to,” he said. “So, maintenance crews have to get up there, even if it is 120 or 10 degrees with shop vacs and suck the water off the old roof to try and keep it from into the building. It is a maintenance nightmare.”
Opting for a new building
During the planning and assessment period, Davis said option one for the district was repairing and renovating the current high school. That is where discussions began over repair versus new to address the issues.
“This became apparent, it was a definite need,” he said. “We started talking to architect firms to bring some ideas and we started planning out and interviewing. I think we interviewed four architect firms.”
The district chose CWA Group out of Norman.
Manley said the board also requested high school assessments while interviewing architects and CWA was one of those able to perform an in-house assessment of the facilities. That helped lead to the hiring of CWA.
“They brought an entire team of people, about seven or eight,” he said. “They also had an education consultant, a former superintendent. So not only did they have an architect firm, they have an education person that can help us, the administrators, deal with what comes next and how to work with architects. Someone who has been in the business and done this a lot of times.”
Davis said CWA spent the better part of a week on the assessments. It was determined that the repair cost will range between $66.17 million to $67.87 million, which would cost $111,040,000 to finance in a bond. The cost of new construction ranges between $86.34 million and $88.55 million, which costs $144,888,000 to finance in a bond.
“This bond is an investment in Ardmore,” ACS School Board Member Jaclyn Woods said. “The children of Ardmore deserve a safe, educational, and updated learning space. Especially for our high school students as they prepare for graduation and adulthood. The current building is in severe need of repair but why sink more funds into a 50-year-old building that would not solve all the issues present in today’s world.
“A new high school campus would bring much needed investment into the largest school district in the county and south-central Oklahoma. In a time where Ardmore is growing, investing in Ardmore City Schools will aid in the continued growth and economic development in our community.”
Davis said if the district were to opt for repairs for the new building, there is also the problem of where to place students while work is taking place.
“You are going to have an 18 month to two-year construction period,” he said. “You can’t use bond funds to pay for renting out a facility. When you look at that, there are so many problems with repairing the current high school and the cost difference was not that big of a difference between the two numbers. It just made a lot more sense looking into building the new facility.
“Some of the issues too, such as the gym, the flooding issues at the gym have already been addressed in the past. They have got a French drain-type system. And the pumps that are constantly pushing water out of that system. Without building a new building, they will still have those locker rooms underground and that water is not going to be addressed. It is not going to change, it will find a way in.”
Davis said with so many issues to be addressed, the district felt there was a need to start over.
See the Tuesday edition of The Ardmoreite for the second installment, “Why this is needed.”
