Action 8 Questions

It appears that Montrose could apply for the Colorado BEST grant for Action 7 or Action 8. It is a competitive grant that provides financial assistance to school districts for the construction and/or renovation of new or existing schools.

None of the Actions are locked in concrete. The results of the Unify Montrose deliberation are recommendations to the Montrose community and Montrose leadership on what actions it believes should be pursued. The school district will be the final arbiter on any replacing of the Early Childhood Center, so they could certainly choose to look at other options.

Yes, they could. See the response above about actions not being locked in concrete. It is worth noting that the budget for Actions 7 and 8 includes a reserve for replacing the roofs and walls of the Yurts. An interesting question for future consideration is the difference in costs of options that do not require a replacement (but might still require maintenance) versus the cost of the Yurts including the cost of the reserve for replacement. No research was done to compare those costs at this point.

The BEST grant (which is partially funded by marijuana tax revenue) does not cover the complete costs of the construction of new public school facilities, only a portion. The school district believes that a BEST grant could cover 30% to 40% of the costs, if awarded. So, the school district would need to have a line of sight on how to fund the other 60% to 70% of the costs. The school district did indicate that support of the Assembly - as representatives of the community - for replacing the aging ECE Center, would be helpful in a grant application.

For more information: Marijuana Tax Revenue and Education | CDE (state.co.us)

To determine whether yurts were a viable structure for preschool classrooms, we worked with the Montrose School District, the head of Early Childhood licensing for the Western Slope and the head of Early Childhood licensing for the State of Colorado in Denver. Colorado early childhood licensing confirmed that a yurt could be used as a preschool classroom as long as it adhered to all the early childhood regulations (adequate square footage per child, number of doors in and out of the classroom, access to an individual bathroom, etc.) Beyond that, the zoning department, health department and fire department needed to certify the yurt for occupancy. To that end, we also worked with John Gibson, owner of Secret Creek, the local manufacturer of yurts in Montrose. He, in turn, made inquiries to the zoning department, health department and fire department to confirm a yurt could be certified. It can be and has been: the school district already uses yurts at its outdoor elementary and middle school called Outer Range. It is also worth adding that leaders at the State of Colorado Department of Early Childhood said they would, if the project were to go forward, make themselves available to help overcome obstacles if they come up.

Families of qualifying 3 and 4-year-olds can benefit from Colorado’s UPK program until the child is able to register for school (typically around 5 years old). For 3-year-olds, UPK can be received for roughly 2 years, and 4-year-olds can receive UPK for about a year.

A new center would need to install a kitchen, administrative space, parking, security, landscaping, etc. In whole or in part these amenities are already in place at the elementary schools. So mostly, it’s just adding classrooms on to those buildings. That is what accounts for the cost savings.

For the new construction Early Childhood Upgrade and the Neighborhood Classrooms, the numbers come from the Office of Operations for the School District. For the Yurts, estimates came from the School District and Secret Creek, the local Yurt manufacturer. There are initial budgets, which will be modified based on the Improvements the delegates are looking for.

As explained in the Lowdown for Actions 7 and 8, the Early Childhood Center’s trailers lack enough full day classroom space for Headstart eligible children, old and needing repair, and will likely hit capacity this year.

That said, there are a lot of K-8 students (around 4,000), and comparatively few afterschool spots for enriching activities (around 260).

But where is the need greatest? And how to respond? These are the kind of question that you Delegates are best positioned to wrestle with.

That is a good question for you Delegates to consider. Given that projects like this tend to only come around once a generation, the School District’s intuition is to upgrade all the schools at once, so that Olathe and Johnson are not still in trailers two decades from now. But it is a worthy question for the Assembly, certainly.

It would be closed. In all of these scenarios, the ECE with the trailers, would be closed once new facilities were in place. At least that is how the action is framed now.

According to Operations at the School District, yes. In some cases, some remodeling and reworking of existing space would need to happen to connect these classrooms in a logical way. But yes, apparently there is enough land at each elementary school to do these additions.

Since almost all of the students who attend the District Preschool do NOT pay tuition (because they have qualifying factors such as learning disabilities, poverty, etc.) the affordability gap is less of an issue with this Action. However, the ECC preschool is likely to be completely full by early next year (and would be closer to full now if the state were clear about the funding available for 3-year-olds under Universal Pre-K). And there are 50 children, right now, who are eligible for Headstart full-day service, but Montrose does not have enough classrooms that can accommodate full-day preschool. And according to the 2021 Childcare Assessment, the need for spaces is going to grow. So, this Action does meaningfully increase number of spots available, especially full-day spots.

Of course things happen on construction projects that cannot be anticipated. It’d be shocking to get through a construction project without a surprise. But people still estimate the cost of projects in advance, typically including a contingency, and then work to get it done on time on budget. Sometimes contractors can be incentivized to complete things early and penalized if they are late.

All that said, this deliberation is not structured to get into the weeds of how best to manage a construction project.

What our deliberation is meant to do - at least related to these Actions - is to give the public and the School District an idea of what a diverse group of citizens think of these different approaches, taking into account a reasonable estimate of what they might cost. Those estimates will be presented to the Assembly after voting has been completed on Improvements.

But we know that the most expensive is the new construction Early Childhood Center, the Neighborhood Classrooms Project is roughly half that cost, and the Yurt Village is less than half of that, unless the Improvements the Delegates want change things.