Chapin High Bids Approved, 6-1 Vote in Favor of Moving Forward

The bid for the renovation and expansion of Chapin High School was approved Monday night with a vote of 6-1, but not without opposition from those questioning the school's student capacity.

At the board's regular meeting Monday night at Chapin Elementary School, board member Beth Hutchison-Watson made a motion authorizing the  district administration “to enter into a contract with the lowest responsible and responsive bidder for an amount not to exceed $45,940,500, in response to the district’s invitation to bid advertised Sept. 18 for the renovation and expansion of Chapin High School. The district administration is authorized to execute the contract at such time as there is no legal impediment to doing so.”

The motion was seconded by board member Jan Hammond. The only board member to vote against the motion was Kim Murphy. All board members were in attendance.

The bid has been awarded to China Construction America of South Carolina.

The base bid is $43,400,000 with four alternates ranging from $101,500 to $1,080,000, for mechanical changes and duct board replacement to an alternate plan for the administration area.

The district received eight bids, with the highest bid coming in at $50 million. A copy of the bid tabulation is provided.

Murphy said she because she thinks the district wasn’t being honest about the student capacity of the school after the construction.

Murphy said with the renovations, the school wouldn’t be expanded to hold the 1,700 students that the district has said it would.

“This is not a popularity contest and I must do what I believe is the right thing for our parents, students and taxpayers of District 5," Murphy said. "This Chapin High School project won’t expand student capacity at the school to any more than its current enrollment."

"The addition of one more classroom based on last year’s teachers is like adding one more portable .... You can’t both build a new high school and expand Chapin. The student population won’t support that ….District 5 hasn’t been honest with the public and I simply cannot support moving forward on such an important project.”

Murphy said she has taken the plans for the school and has placed each teacher in a classroom - for illustrative purposes, no teacher assignment has been approved - and found that the plans would not accommodate an extra 400 students.

Both Superintendent Dr. Stephen Hefner and several board members including Ed White say the questions about the student capacity have been addressed before by architects and the school's principal.

Chapin High principal Akil Ross said there would be more than enough space to hold the students. 

Ross said there were currently 91 teachers with 23 currently in portables.

He said with" the completion of the new renovations and construction, I will have a total of 103 classrooms. This doesn’t include eight science labs and this doesn’t include the four computer labs."

Ross said if he has 103 teachers, only 75 percent would be teaching at a time and the other 25 percent would be planning. He also said the average class size would be 22 students. 

Murphy also addressed a budget estimate made by architects a month ago at the district’s mandatory pre-bid meeting. The budget for the project was estimated to be between $30 to $32 million.

Murphy said the bids came in “substantially higher” and that the numbers “didn’t seem to add up.”

Murphy asked if the district could “just lay out where the money would come from so we could have a good plan of attack” and she didn’t know how the board could approve the plans with $13 million over budget.

Keith McAlister, director of new design and construction, said the amount mentioned in Watson’s motion includes the base bid and all four alternates

McAlister said the budget was $32 million, but estimates as of Oct. 31 were for a base bid for about $40 million.

McAlister said in 2009, he talked about the need to begin projects because the district was getting a lot of “bang for its buck” because construction cost were down and they needed to take advantage of the market.

He said construction costs have increased since then and prior estimates were made in a different climate than the current market.

District officials say the project has been delayed because of Murphy's lawsuit against them and the S.C. Department of Health and Control, and that they needed to move forward with the project in order to address other projects in the plan. 

Before the board reached the action item for the bids, several members of the community requested to address the board during public particiaption about the project.

Public participation

Ed Yates, a concerned citizen, read a letter urging the board to not vote on the bids Monday night.  

“Despite the fact that people were promised that Chapin High School would be expanded, it is widely known that the plan has been cut back,” Yates said. “Chapin is now going to be a renovated, but not expanded school.”

“Many people believe that the reason Chapin High School is not being expanded is because increasing the number of classrooms to what was promised would provide abundant classroom space and new schools would not be needed ….”

Matteo Macaluso, a sophomore and class president at Chapin High, said the students could not be happier and believed the Monday’s vote was the right course of action and that the community was behind the project no matter what.

“We look forward to a favorable action by the board tonight to begin building as soon as possible,” Macaluso said. “We are also very excited to see the many fruits these new renovations will bear, as we work to not only make Chapin High School nationally-acclaimed but also our great district as well.”

“However, let it be known should it be any further delays to purposely stall our much-needed renovations you will be met with heavy resistance not only from around the community but from the student body of Chapin High School ….”

Diane Schiferl, a world language teacher and chair of the department at Chapin High, said the school deserved a “safe and wonderful facility,” and that she was frustrated about what she said was misinformation being passed around in the community.  

“I was a little frustrated when I heard that at the last board meeting a paper was passed around with misinformation about classroom allocations,” Schiferl said. “I looked over the paper and saw a few mistakes ….There are at least two teachers’ names assigned a room that are no longer working at Chapin High and whose position was not filled with another teacher.”

“They’re gone. They do not need a room. One was a world language position and an art position. There were also rooms that had no teachers assigned to them.”

Schiferl said she copied the official plans and a faculty list from the master schedule, and checked for a room for each current teacher.

“When I did this, every teacher got a room and there was more than enough empty rooms to allow for growth. The community voted and the bond referendum passed in 2008. The voters approved renovations for our school. We have been making due with what we have for too long. Enough is enough.”

Hefner has said construction could begin by the end of the month.