To borrow from Chadds Ford’s Paul Koch, the Unionville Chadds Ford School Board didn’t surprise anyone. The board voted unanimously on Feb. 18 to issue an RFP, Request for Proposal, to replace C.F. Patton Middle School. The RFP is a solicitation of bids for the design of a new school.
Koch was one of several people who spoke before the vote, asking the board to delay the vote.
“You have a wonderful opportunity tonight, an opportunity to surprise a bunch of people. And if you’ve listened to the community here, I think you should surprise everyone by not moving forward with a decision tonight,” Koch said.
Koch continued by saying, “If you’ve listened, I don’t think you’ve heard a lot of people say, ‘Don’t do this.’ What they’ve said is, ‘We don’t believe you’ve got all the information you need to make a decision.’”
He said residents want to hear an objective “unbiased” analysis of the finances involved.
Koch wasn’t alone. Trupen Modi, Manav Maheshwari of Chadds Ford, and others also questioned the immediate need for a vote.
Maheshwari said he’s not opposed to any of the options — maintain, renovate, or replace — but he wants enough information “to make an informed decision.”
“Many residents share this position. Just asking for more information should not be perceived as opposition to the project,” he said.
Several others expressed the same sentiment, with Modi saying there’s been a lack of transparency, along with financial calculations that nobody trusts.” 
He asked, “What is the rush?”
At that point, the meeting stalled because Modi had exceeded his three-minute time limit but said he wasn’t getting up without an answer to his question. After a brief delay, he eventually did yield without incident.
Several others said the tax increase that the project would cause could force some people to move out of the district, while others said there should be a greater focus on improving the district's academic rating, which they say has fallen.
Betsy Collier, of Chadds Ford, said, “It’s not the building that counts, it’s what happens inside the building.”
Yet, there were others who spoke in favor of building a new middle school. More people spoke in favor during the Feb. 18 meeting than had said so in all the previous meetings.
Joe Everett, of East Marlborough Township, said “This decision about a new school seems like an absolute no-brainer to me. Our children deserve an opportunity to go to state-of-the-art classrooms and facilities. They deserve the best, and a few dollars extra a year on our taxes is a really small price to pay.”
He added that he has no doubt that the board and administration had done the right amount of research that was well thought-out and that he wishes the decision had been made sooner.
Another East Marlborough resident whose name could not be discerned, said the middle school is basically the same as when she went to Patton in the 1980s, even though there have been some improvements, but the school is still outdated.
“Every piece of infrastructure, sooner or later, requires reinvestment to continue to serve, not just for. the next five years, but over the coming decade,” she said. “And it seems to me at this point that our middle school has reached the point in time where we must reinvest into our facility, invest into our children, to reinvest into the future of those children moving forward.” She added that there has been a good amount of transparency.
Jen Panero, of Chadds Ford Township, said she’s in favor of going ahead with the RFP.
“I think it’s a great way to get more information on exactly what the middle school might offer,” she said and added that the replace option makes more sense than the maintain or renovate options. She also said there are some benefits to having a new school that hasn’t been mentioned before, predictability, and increased educational opportunities.
She said replacing the building is predictable, and that costs can be locked in.
"Under the maintain option, the school’s going to be in a react mode for however long it will take to do the work, decades maybe.”
Panero explained that the school and district would be constantly reacting to infrastructure problems and failures under the maintain option. She noted some class days lost last year because of HVAC and air quality issues.
She added that new educational opportunities may arise if the replace option goes forward.
“There are certain things that, in an old building that wasn’t built for the modern education of 2025, there are just certain things we can’t do.”
Panera explained that there’s no room for collaboration and there are more STEM opportunities [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] in a modern building. And she added that the auditorium is too small for groups that use it regularly.
“Those are not the kind of changes we can make with the current footprint.”
Eventually, it came time for the directors to express how they felt leading up to the vote.
Director Erin Talbert said the district has made attempts over the years to improve and maintain Patton Middle School, but those attempts weren’t good enough.
“Despite the investments already made, material problems still exist that impact the work environment and the learning environment. Investing large sums of money only to come away with only a slightly improved situation just doesn’t make sense. Attempting to retrofit the existing building will cause a high level of disruption and I believe that 10 years from now, the people in these seats will say we slapped brandades on the wound, rather than properly address the needs,” she said.
Jeff Hellrung said the replace option “right-sizes the new building to enable optimal educational programming, safety, teacher collaboration, efficient movement, and ADA compliance.
Hellrung, a previous school board president, made several comparisons with the high school renovation project that was twice shot down in referendums and solicited no community input. He said the current middle school project has solicited input from the community and that there is no need to go to a referendum because the proposed tax increases are within the state’s Act 1 Index.
Current board President Victoria Baratta said, as if in response to the question about rushing, “I do not believe we are rushing into this. We have been considering and have had a timetable for many months. We have had community input; we’ve had surveys; we’ve had committee meetings.”
She continued by saying the district had a plan to determine whether to maintain, renovate, or replace and has followed that plan.
“Tonight’s vote comes after we worked with a professional firm and a wide range of stakeholders to study the feasibility and impacts of these options,” Baratta said. “There are significant flaws with the current middle school building, and it falls short of meeting the district’s needs. From my perspective, it would be bad for our students, the staff, and our community to continue pouring money into a structure that is so far below the standards of our other buildings.”
She continued by saying the path forward keeps taxes below the Act 1 Index, allowing for the new school building, while keeping the debt service stable.
With the unanimous decision to move forward with the RFP, the board now has a specific timetable to proceed with this part of the process.
The draft of the Request for Proposal is to be completed by mid-March and issued to five or six architectural firms by late March. The proposals are expected to be in by late April, evaluated and scored in May, and then a recommendation to award the proposal in June.
Other business
The board unanimously accepted the retirement of Superintendent John Sanville, effective July 31.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
(11 votes, average: 2.73 out of 5)
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Baratta said that the Board has solicited community input with surveys, somehow that survey never made it to my house. I’m curious if other readers in the District received the survey that was mentioned in the meeting.