DeKalb Schools will bring to the board on Monday a recommendation to construct a 750-seat, 38-classroom, two-story addition to Lakeside High School. The project will also include
- Kitchen extension (1,546 sq/ft)
- Cafeteria extension (2,025 sq/ft)
- New media center addition (4,391 sq/ft)
- 3 story employee parking garage
- 138 additional student outdoor parking
Note: This project will not include any renovations or additions to existing media rooms, art rooms, gymnasium, fields (not including softball field relocation), or any other core spaces or surrounding infrastructure.
What are your thoughts?
Conceptual Plan
The following plans represent a conceptual approach to locating building additions and site modifications at the schools recommended for additions and reconfiguration. These conceptual plans are intended for the purpose of determining feasibility only.
click to enlarge
Enrollment/Capacity – Lakeside High School (Oct 2016)
Lakeside currently has 2,184 students enrolled and is expected to have 2,619 students (863 students over current capacity) by year 2022.
| Enrollment By Grade (Oct 2016) | Total | Total | Available | Percent | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| School | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | Enrollment | Capacity | Seats | Capacity | Portables |
| Lakeside HS | 686 | 570 | 461 | 467 | 2,184 | 1,756 | -428 | 124% | |
Recommendation
The administration recommends constructing a 750-seat, 38-classroom, two-story addition extending the current footprint and bringing the school to 132 classrooms.
Core Areas
The recommendation is to construct a new kitchen/cafeteria addition, as well as a new media center addition. These modifications will expand core areas by 7,962-square-ft.
Cost
| August Round 3 Estimates | Cost | September Final Recommendation | Change in Seats | Estimates | Change In Funding | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 600 seat addition at Dunwoody HS | $23 million | 600 seats (2,100 seat capacity) | 0 | $16.4 million | – 29% |
| 2 | 450 seat addition at Peachtree MS | $17 million | 450 seats (1,700 seat capacity) | 0 | $13.9 million | – 18% |
| 3 | 900 seat addition at Lakeside HS | $34 million | 750 seats (2,500 seat capacity) | – 17% | $22.1 million | – 35% |
| 4 | 500 seat addition at Chamblee HS | $19 million | 600 seats (2,400 seat capacity) | + 17% | $16.4 million | – 14% |
The estimated total cost of the proposed recommendation has flucuated over the last few months +/- 35%. It was most recently $16.4 million. The latest estimated total cost of the proposed recommendation is $26,200,000.
Total Budget Cost includes direct construction costs, Arch/Eng. fees, site testing fees, furniture/fixtures/equipment, and project contingencies. These costs were developed from historical cost information compiled by School Planning and Management, in their Annual School Construction Report
2015, Region 5 (Southeast United States) cost per student for new high schools. These costs were then inflation adjusted for year 2019.
Student Moves
It estimated that 125 students will be redistricted from Tucker HS to Lakeside HS. It is also estimated that 250 students in Sagamore will be redistricted to Cross Keys.
Board of Education Meeting
These recommendations will be presented to the board at the end of the 2pm business meeting this coming Monday. There will be public comment at 5:45pm. The board is expected to vote on this in December. You may get on the list to speak this Monday at public comment by emailing Margaret_Francois (Margaret_Francois@dekalbschoolsga.org)
“Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
Stan,
Any idea how this came about so quickly? Did DCSD take the lead or did the Lakeside community spearhead this?
Do you think that this means that the Lakeside addition will be the first ESPLOST-V new school/addition project to begin?
Thanks!
How did we get to this point? Follow the journey through the Facilities Planning and Feasibility Study. There are quite a few schools the administration is recommending get an addition. There are quite a few variables that will drive who goes first. A schedule does eventually get created. I publish that when it comes out.
I can promise you the Lakeside community had no active role spearheading any of this–this proposal is news to both our school council and administration.
What area of Tucker is Lakeside picking up?
Very disappointed the planning department has had these proposed plans since July 2016 and this is the first the community is seeing the details. Many meeting were held with all levels of parents and Dekalb school board, Dekalb regional superintendents, and planning officials. I feel like that was wasted effort without full transparency or disclosure. I can support this addition, but do not see the need to add students from Tucker.
The Lakeside Cluster Summit was formed in January 2016 as a vehicle for parents, administrators, elected councils, leaders and community members in the Lakeside feeder pattern to come together to address issues of concern to the Lakeside school community.
The Lakeside Cluster Summit held several meetings in addition to the school district community engagement.
Randy Faigin David (randyandken@comcast.net), chair of the Lakeside Cluster Summit, provided this position paper recommending an addition of 750 – 1000 seats at LHS. Please contact your board member, school council and Lakeside Cluster Summit and let them know your thoughts on this position.
Dr. Green asked school council clusters to come together and develop a consensus. He got what should have been expected – a group that isn’t going to sit in a room and look at other schools’ leaders and tell them they need to leave the cluster. So the only response was to say they wanted to stay together. Hence this crazy plan to add 750-1000 seat capacity (if they keep Sagamore) to an area that can’t handle the additional traffic and the neighborhoods are blindsided. An increase of 33-50% of the current capacity. If the planning dept.’s projections are correct, LHS and the other 3 high schools proposed to receive additions will be at 98-100% capacity when the additions are complete. Then what? Students/staff/instruction will be disrupted for 2 years during construction..which the school just finished doing in 2012. At best this is a short term solution.
The long term solution is to create a new cluster with a new high school in the vicinity of Doraville. Word is the Doraville mayor is interested in having a high school in that area. If you have concerns, please email Dr. Green, the planning dept director Dan Drake and all of the BOE members, not just the one for your area. You can find the emails on the DCSD website.
I don’t see how a softball field can be relocated in a creek and flood zone. A 3-story parking garage off Oak Grove Rd? That sounds like a nightmare.
And still Briarcliff HS will remain closed?
Briarcliff HS – The final recommendation from the administration is “Build a new 2,500 seat Cross Keys HS at Briarcliff site (or “cost‐neutral” location in Brookhaven area)”.
Skipping the discussion of how we got to where we are … Moving forward, what to do with Briarcliff HS is a tough one. If we rebuild/renovate the existing site to alleviate over crowding in Region 2, it’s overkill. If we use it to relieve some of the over crowding in Region 1, we create a traffic nightmare for a large population crossing 85.
It appears that the administration is going to sell Briarcliff HS and build a new high school West of 85.
Any chance of adding a lane on Briarcliff between Oak Grove and Briarlake, or at least from Lakeside parking lot to Briarlake. It can take 20 min just to drive by the school when it lets out. Increasing staff and faculty by over 30% is going to make an existing problem even worse. Perhaps an exit from the parking that leads directly to Briarlake would be a cheaper and more efficient route?
The school district has not contacted the county about the feasibility of modifying the surrounding infrastructure to accommodate a 2,500 seat school there.
Stan,
Does that mean the school district did not look at the comprehensive feasibility of adding this/these additions beyond whether the structures cobbled into the space? Does the school district plan to contact the county (or any of the cities involved) about the feasibility of any of the proposed additions or do they plan to stick these additions in and let the communities “deal” with it?
These are feasibility plans to answer if it is physically possible to add seats to these schools. When and if the board approves the project list, the school district will hire engineers and architects to make engineering plans. They will also start discussions with the county at that time.
Much like the new elementary school going in at Skyland Park, the school district will work with the City of Brookhaven to the best of their ability. But … ultimately it’s “deal with it” because the school district doesn’t have many other options.
Sell Briarcliff Site – Build Doraville High – house high school magnet program at new Doraville High. Eliminates the fear of Crosskeys 2.0 . Frees up room at CCHS.
Why does the school board and county employees continue to ignore the logistics to
Build new high school in the doraville corridor as requested by the doraville mayor.
It makes no sense why students with doraville addresses are
Bused to lakeside.
Can you explain to me why the DeKalb County School Board and employees are recommending redistricting 250 Students Sagamore Hills Elementary (the school size is 433 not 250) from the Lakeside Cluster and in the same recommendation you are redistricting 150 Tucker students into the Lakeside Cluster and have 80 + students that are county employees children from outside the Lakeside Cluster attending Lakeside. Not to mention the 10-20 students that are attending Lakeside when they don’t meet the proof of residency requirement. DeKalb County employees should only have been able to bring their child to a school that was under capacity which Lakeside High School has been over capacity for years.
I believe the 250 from Sagamore only accounts for the 4 grades that will be housed at the high school at any given time. So, 70 per grade if all continued? Closer to 250 with some going private.
The Lakeside school cluster is working on alternatives, but it does look like this is going to happen. Jim McMahon (our Board of Education rep) is hosting a town hall meeting next week at Oak Grove Baptist. Info on time to follow. NOW IS THE TIME to let your voice be heard.
While this increase will help to address over-crowding – LHS is currently at 120% of attendance, it will also likely affect traffic (potentially heavily) in the area.
I’m not satisfied that adding thousands of seats across multiple existing high schools is the best solution to overcrowding in regions 1 and 2.
Besides the obvious short-term disruption and inconvenience that construction will cause to students, staff, and other community members, there are long term problems created by cramming too many people onto one campus: public safety is a key concern. How does one safely evacuate thousands of students and staff in the event of a fire or other emergency? How do emergency response vehicles gain access to the school and/or surrounding neighborhoods during morning and afternoon rush hour?
The current traffic on Briarcliff is not just an inconvenience, it’s a safety hazard. Drivers become agitated and the less-experienced ones make poor decisions. Walkers and cyclists are at greater risk, particularly during on winter mornings or during inclement weather. Emergency vehicles can’t move freely to reach schools or homes on 2-lane roads that have become parking lots. The traffic jams around LHS will likely become significantly worse with additional students, and will lead to late arrivals not only at LHS, but at the middle school, who depends upon the same buses to deliver students to HMS.
We must insist that new high schools be built in DeKalb to relieve overcrowding. We must reject the additional seats at our existing high schools as inadequate solutions to the issue of overcrowding.
It seems like having the garage on the left of the school with a rooftop classroom/deck and a breezeway would be a much better use of space. Either way, the north intersection at Briarcliff and Woodwardia needs to be addressed. There was just a 3 car accident there this week involving students. There needs to be a true turn lane so that those heading south on Briarcliff can continue. There also needs to be two right hand turn lanes at Briarcliff and Briarlake. I would love to see a bridge for walking or driving over the marsh land that exits onto Briarlake. Many parents park there for pick up and if that “parking area” section could be slightly widened with an exit/entrance point, that would really help clear up traffic. I thought Dan Drake said the new building would be near the tennis courts. I’m not sure why they chose this layout for the additions instead.