JC school facilities graded as ‘C’ or satisfactory

A team of architects from the firm ACI Boland gave the Jefferson City Public Schools a C letter grade, in an appraisal they recently did for the districts Long Range Facilities Planning Committee which met Thursday night.

The districts elementary schools performed marginally better than its secondary schools, but both sets were rated satisfactory overall by the architects who used a rating system suggested by the Council of Educational Facility Planners International.

Michael Kautz, principal architect, said he and a colleague toured all the districts facilities, meeting mainly with principals, to gather their concerns. He said the appraisal tool essentially a scorecard is subjective, but used all over the country to evaluate school buildings.

Were comparing these facilities to new buildings that are being designed today, he noted.

Among the districts 11 elementary schools, only one Pioneer Trail was deemed excellent and eight were deemed satisfactory.

But West Elementary School and East Elementary School are teetering on the border between being acceptable and unacceptable, earning scores of 60.7 and 57.4 respectively.

(Interestingly, within Jefferson City, the two schools perform at opposite ends of the states accountability standards spectrum, with West Elementary earning 97 percent of the points the state awards for academic achievement and attendance and East Elementary earning 52.9 percent.)

The Southwest Early Childhood Center is considered a special building. It earned a 77 rating and was deemed satisfactory.

Among the citys six secondary institutions, the architects consider three of those buildings satisfactory and three of them borderline.

The older the buildings were, the worse they performed. The three borderline schools were Simonsen 9th Grade Center, the Jefferson City Academic Center (JCAC) Building and Jefferson City High School.

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JC school facilities graded as 'C' or satisfactory