Central-office real estate: can you upgrade your headquarters without looking self-serving?

School Administrator, August, 2003 by Priscilla Pardini

Case study no. 3.: South Milwaukee, Wis.

There's no way administrators in the School District of South Milwaukee, Wis., would be getting a new central office if the community wasn't getting a new high school, auditorium, field house and football stadium.

"We couldn't have sold it. We wouldn't even have wanted to," says Superintendent David Ewald. "It would have been very selfish. Our needs are certainly no greater than those of the student population."

According to Joe Agron, editor-in-chief of American School & University magazine, South Milwaukee's approach to acquiring new administrative space is a strategy being used more and more often. He says it makes good sense. "When these projects are part of a package of improvements, a district is less likely to have problems getting voter approval," says Agron.

South Milwaukee s new administrative office space represents just a small piece of the $42 million building project now under way in the 3,600-student suburban school district. Voters approved the spending in a referendum in February 2002 by a margin of 58 to 42 percent. The referendum, the largest ever passed in Milwaukee County and the fifth largest ever approved in Wisconsin, encountered no organized opposition. It won approval from voters in each of the district's 16 voting wards.

Plans call for building a new high school adjacent to the existing high school and converting that building into a middle school. (The existing middle school, about a mile away, was built in 1913 and currently houses the 'district's administrative offices. It likely will he razed.) As a result, all students in grades 6 through 12 will be located on the same campus where Ewald says they will be able to share resources.

The new high school complex will include a 750-seat auditorium, a field house with a fitness center, a new football stadium and track, and a staff development center. Tucked into one wing of the new school will be the administrative offices, which Ewald estimates will costless than $500,000.

He says the main reason for relocating the administrative offices was the age of the present middle school and related maintenance issues. But members of the district's facility study committee also wanted administrators working in close proximity to students. "It's easy to become just a business instead of a child-centered business," says Ewald. "Being close to the kids reminds you of that every day."

Case study no. 4: Mt. Baker, Wash.

Buildings around the country deemed unsuitable for classrooms, cafeterias and gymnasiums are literally being given a new lease on life, turning up more and more often as offices for school district administrators.

"Space that is not good enough for students is being recycled for offices," says Michael Hall, the chief marketing officer with Fanning/Howey Associates.

That's the case in Mt. Baker, Wash., where officials work out of a building originally designed as the high school library. Later used for elementary classrooms, the space was converted to offices in 1999 following the construction of a new high school and elementary school. Bruce Burpee, assistant superintendent in Mt. Baker during the planning of the project, says the district was able to remodel the building into new central-office space because the price tag on the new elementary school came in under budget.