Greater Clark considers updated plans for new middle school

Aug. 19—JEFFERSONVILLE — An outdated facility, a need for more acreage and population growth in the northern part of Jeffersonville are among the factors informing Greater Clark County Schools' decision to relocate and rebuild Parkview Middle School.

Greater Clark Superintendent Mark Laughner and other district leaders discussed the plans for a new middle school in Jeffersonville and heard feedback from the community during a Thursday Q&A session at Parkview.

As of Thursday, Greater Clark has a purchase agreement in place with real estate agent David Bauer for property at the former Twilight Golf Course at 5316 Indiana 62. The district is also moving forward with plans to purchase adjacent property at New Chapel Road and Utica Sellersburg Road.

However, before the district can move forward with a new school at those sites, the Jeffersonville City Council will need to rezone the two properties as institutional. The nearly 20-acre Twilight property is zoned commercial, and the 26-acre New Chapel and Utica Sellersburg property is zoned residential.

In July, the council rejected the district's rezoning request for the New Chapel and Utica Sellersburg property, but Laughner wants to bring its request back to the council and collaborate with city leaders to find a few different options.

The two sites would include a combined 46 acres of land for the new middle school, a significant increase from the 11-acre Parkview Middle School site on Brigman Avenue.

According to Laughner, the next steps will include creating a site plan to present to the Jeffersonville City Council before the rezoning request goes to the Jeffersonville Plan Commission.

"We feel like combining the properties, which will lessen the impact versus what homes and apartments would be there — we can create a compelling plan when we develop the site plan and have some options for the city," he said. "And we want to sit down with them so we can work through what's best there."

Laughner said he is "just trying to do what's right" for both Greater Clark and the City of Jeffersonville. Throughout the presentation, he shared data that has influenced the district's planning of the new middle school, saying the district has been studying the issue for more than two years.

"We didn't just haphazardly pick out this site," he said. "We've done our homework."

The new middle school is expected to cost at least $60 million, which is higher than originally expected because of inflation, Laughner said.

NEEDS FOR A NEW BUILDING

Parkview Middle School was built in 1961, and multiple studies have identified the need to replace the building, including a 2014 study by Kovert Hawkins and a 2021 study by Lancer + Beebe.

The 2021 study assessed each building in Greater Clark based on a color-coded system using red for failing condition, orange for poor and yellow for average. For Parkview, 53 categories were categorized as red or orange out of 94 categories, and 18 were categorized as yellow.

The goal of the Greater Clark administration and school board is to be cost-efficient with its facilities, so the district doesn't have operational costs "that are taking all of our money."

Laughner noted that he served as principal of Parkview from 2005 to 2012, saying he is well aware of the issues with the school building and the building was in need of replacement back then. He also discussed problems with traffic, saying "it's not a safe situation in terms of arrival and dismissal."

"During that time, it was an old building then that needed to be replaced," he said. "This is one of our most difficult schools in the school district in terms of arrival and dismissal, because of how cars come in here — there's one way in, one way out, the roads are very narrow, cars are parking in the street."

Additional land would help alleviate these issues with arrival and dismissal, since there would be plenty of space on site to stage buses and cars.

"The industry standard at a middle school, if you do research, if you talk to architects, is that you should have at least 20 acres of land and then plus one acre for every 100 students in your school," Laughner said. "So if you're going to have 800 students, you really need 28 acres for a new school."

Laughner said its architects have said it would be "almost impossible" to build a new school on the current site while keeping school in operation due to the small size and landlocked nature of the site. He also discussed challenges the district has faced in finding other land downtown that would work for a new school.

GROWTH IN JEFFERSONVILLE

One of the considerations is building a school to accommodate a growing population in the northern part of the city. Laughner referred to a demographic study completed by Jerry Mckibben, which indicated declining growth in downtown Jeffersonville and increased growth to the north.

"When you look at what's going on from the roundabout to Stacy Road, over the next five to 10 years, especially with the widening of Charlestown Pike, there's a good chance there could be another 2,000 to 3,000 homes out there in that area," he said. "And the question is, where are those kids going to go to school?"

Laughner said the location would be a central area for the city and the school district, and as more growth occurs in that area, he worries about losing Parkview students to other schools, including schools outside Greater Clark.

A policy analytics study also projected that assessed value will continue to increase over the next 10 years for Greater Clark as the community grows. Laughner emphasizes that planned facility projects such as the new middle school are "tax-neutral," and the district is committed to maintaining the tax rate at $1.10.

"We're in a real good place in Greater Clark because of a lot of the work that the city council has done, that the county has done, that Charlestown has done," he said. "Because of growth, our assessed value went up 12% last year, and the year before that it went up 8%."

This year, Parkview's enrollment is 725 students. By 2024-25, the enrollment is expected to drop below 700 students, according to Laughner. When he served as the middle school's principal a decade ago, there were more than 800 students.

Of the students who attend Parkview, 355 kids live north of Allison Lane, and 353 live south of Allison Lane, Laughner said. Only 155 live in downtown Jeffersonville.

"I think that's a telling piece of data in terms of where the kids live within Parkview," he said.

One of the concerns expressed by Greater Clark parents include inaccessibility to those who walk to school. In months of warm weather, less than 10% of students walk to Parkview, and in cold weather, 5% or less walk to school.

Laughner said students who might typically walk to Parkview would get transportation to the new school, and there will be activity buses available for students who participate in after-school activities. The site under consideration for the new school is about six miles away from Parkview.

COMMUNITY INPUT

One concern for parents is the relocation of the school away from the downtown area. Ed Siewert, a Jeffersonville resident who lives on Court Avenue, is the father of a current Parkview student and a second grader at Franklin Square Elementary.

He does not want to see the school moved from the downtown area, and at Thursday's meeting, he expressed concerns about accessibility for downtown residents with limited resources.

"We have a community built around the school, and now they're going to rip the school out of the community and put it in a new part of town," Siewert said.

Another concern expressed at Thursday's meeting is the size of the new middle school, which would be built to accommodate about 1,000 students. One resident worried that students would "get lost and fall through the cracks."

In response, Laughner noted the difficulty of funding smaller neighborhood schools due to the state's funding formula, which is based on student enrollment at schools.

Mitsuko Martinez, band teacher at Parkview, said she has 230 students "in a band room that won't fit them," she said.

"I have almost a full third of the school in band, so if you're talking about what attracts kids to a school, it's what's happening in the building itself, and there's no space to make the band room any bigger here," she said. "There's not much space to build an auditorium that's going to fit over 1,000 spectators in there. I can't put my band on that stage — they don't fit. I would like a little more space for these kids, because they're really into it."

Carrie Howe, a math teacher at Parkview, has taught for 25 years at the middle school. She said she is frustrated about the time spent debating the location of a new school, saying "the longer we do that, the longer it's going to be before something's done."

"I would like us to please figure out how to work together so this can happen for the kids," she said.