Bethlehem Area School District should renovate, not replace, Nitschmann

Allentown Morning Call
Sunday, April 27, 2008

By Thomas Hylton

Like the rest of America, the Bethlehem Area School District is living beyond its means and slow to face that reality.  Already one of the most heavily indebted districts in Pennsylvania, Bethlehem now proposes to demolish Nitschmann Middle School in walkable west Bethlehem and replace it with a new $62 million school, preferably in sprawling Hanover Township.

The proposal is a textbook example of unsustainable development – throwing away existing resources, undermining the viability of our traditional towns, and promoting more busing, traffic congestion, and air pollution.

The school district’s engineer says the most expensive option is renovating and enlarging the current building.  If so, Nitschmann would be one of the most unusual school renovation projects in Pennsylvania.  Statistics compiled by the Pennsylvania Department of Education going back to 2003 show that new construction is about twice as expensive, per square foot, as alterations and additions, when total project costs are considered.

Renovating existing schools makes so much sense that the Department of Education last year sponsored a brochure entitled “Renovate or Replace” in which Gov. Rendell’s top cabinet officers argue that renovating older schools can save tax dollars, reinforce established communities, and still provide facilities that meet 21st century standards.  As an added incentive to keep older buildings, the school code was changed in 2005 to provide school districts with an extra state subsidy for renovation projects.

Consider Broughal, the district’s most architecturally distinctive middle school.  In 2005, I received permission from Bethlehem Superintendent Joseph Lewis to have two educational facility experts tour the 1918 building.  They estimated it would cost about $14 million to renovate the steel-and-masonry building, including asbestos abatement and a 10,000 square foot addition, keeping the school right-sized at 650 students.

Instead, the district decided to demolish Broughal and replace it with a mega-school for 900 to 1,000 students at a cost of nearly $50 million.  Although the new building is being touted as “green,” demolition of the current Broughal building is an environmental travesty.  It takes a lot of energy and materials to build a school, and they are all wasted if the school is prematurely demolished and carted off to a landfill.  The current Broughal building is no more worn out than Allentown’s William Allen High School or Bethlehem’s Liberty High School, which were built in the same era.

“The No. 1 principle of green building design is to renovate and recycle existing buildings,” writes Kathleen McGinty, state Secretary of Environmental Protection, in “Renovate or Replace.”

Bethlehem School District officials say Nitschmann does not support a modern educational program.  But educational programs change frequently, whereas school buildings are a long-term investment and should be designed for maximum flexibility.  For example, in the 1970s, it was fashionable to build elementary and middle schools without interior walls.  Such “open schools” didn’t work very well, and most of those schools have subsequently been retrofitted with interior walls. 

Unfortunately, in the realm of public schools, flexibility is a lot harder to come by than money.  In 2003, the Lehigh Valley Charter School for the Performing Arts, serving 400 students, opened in a former warehouse and manufacturing building at Broad and Wood Streets in Bethlehem.  Once a lease was signed, the design and renovations for the school took just five months and cost $1.6 million.  Such stories suggest there are better solutions for Nitschmann’s problems than spending $62 million, if the district really wants to find them.

Another green building principle is walkability.  In 1970, nearly half of American children walked to school.  Today, it’s down to 15 percent, thanks to school districts that replaced older neighborhood schools with new ones on the urban fringe.  The west Bethlehem students who now walk to school would have to be bused to a new school at a suburban site.

 “Pennsylvanians don’t typically think of walking or bicycle riding as transportation,” writes Secretary of Transportation Allen Biehler in ‘Renovate or Replace’, “but it’s actually the most energy-efficient and environmentally friendly form of mobility that exists.”

Making maximum use of our resources has become more important than ever.  Oil prices have reached an all-time high and will continue to rise as the demand for energy skyrockets in developing countries like China and India.  The national savings rate has fallen from 7.5 percent in 1980 to zero today, and Americans have less equity in their homes than any time since the Federal Reserve started tracking data in 1945.

In addition to its $9.4 trillion debt, the federal government faces tens of trillions in unfunded promises to the 77 million baby boomers soon to retire and start collecting Social Security and Medicare benefits. The era of excess must inevitably draw to a close.

In the case of the Bethlehem Area School District, the solution is not a new Nitschmann Middle School, but making better use of the Nitschmann it already has.