STEM to stern makeover

Lansing Pathway bond promises major overhaul of curriculum and buildings

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When a room full of elementary school kids stays quiet for a PowerPoint talk, even after it gets into debt ratios, you have to wonder what's in the pepperoni.

Yvonne Caamal-Canul isn't sparing the pizza or the pie charts in her serial pitches for the Pathway Promise, a $120 million bond for renovating the school system from STEM to stern, up for vote by Lansing residents on May 3.

Lansing School Superintendent Yvonne Camaal Canul pitches the $120 million Pathway Promise bond proposal at Fairvew Elementary Wednesday.
Lawrence Cosentino/City Pulse
"Anybody know how much a boiler costs?" the Lansing schools superintendent asked a gymnasium full of cheesed-up kids and parents at Fairview Elementary Wednesday.

"A million dollars!" cried a third-grader in sparkly pink shirt.

"You're pretty close," Caamal-Canul said. "Half a million. Those things are expensive."

Under the poster-sized figure of Everett High School graduate Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Caamal-Canul made the case for a districtwide set of renovations and additions designed to bring Lansing's schools into the 21st century.

Aging buildings, and their expensive boilers, figure into the plan, which sets aside $18.9 million for general building and energy efficiency improvements. But there is much more to the plan than a laundry list of physical fixes. The Pathway Promise, as the district calls the proposal, is a set of interlocking, domino-like renovations and additions designed to build three curricular "pathways" for students, while continuing to offer a general education at all schools.

The pathways lead to Eastern High School (biotechnology, Chinese language immersion and the International Baccalaureate program); Sexton High School (STEM/ STEAM and skilled trades and manufacturing); and Everett High School (visual and performing arts and NewTech).

Former Lansing mayor David Hollister, a member of the bond proposal committee, said the bond is Lansing’s “best shot in 50 years” to bring its school system up to date.

The Lansing School District serves over 11,000 students in 27 school buildings over 52 square miles, the fifth-largest district in the state.

Duct tape theater

"A Big Mac a month" is Everett High School teacher Jim Allen's mantra these days. "A small latte" is Caamal-Canul's junk food icon of choice for the estimated monthly cost of the millage increase for the average homeowner.

The May 3 millage would roll over an existing 1.5 mill levy, with an added 0.75 mills, adding up to a 2.25 mill total. The money could only be used for buildings, furniture, or equipment, and not for teacher salaries or other labor costs.

If approved by voters, the bond would have a life of 25 years.

"If your home has a taxable value of $48,000, the average figure in Lansing, the additional 0.75 mills would cast you $3 more a month," Caamal-Canul told the group at Fairview.

The renovations dovetail with a major curriculum overhaul that puts each of the district's three high schools on one of three educational "pathways," with feeder schools that start paving the way along each path in elementary and middle school.

The additions and renovations at Everett High School are the costliest item on the district's agenda, at $19.3 million.

Everett, already a magnet school for the visual and performing arts, would stay focused on that pathway, with major upgrades to its auditorium, choir and band rooms, art and other facilities.

Jim Allen, a performing arts teacher at Everett since 2005, took a group of Everett students on a field trip to Washington, D.C., last week. One of their stops was the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where one of Allen’s former students is an assistant director of education.

"Seeing the careers these kids can get with a good arts training is really exciting," Allen said. "The bond is critical in terms of getting a solid stage for the performing arts at Everett."

Caamal-Canul wants Everett to be the region's top arts education center, but the facilities there are strictly 1960s. Dance instructor Karen Knaebel runs a four-year dance program at Everett, cramming a class of 30 students into a 20-foot-by-30-foot studio. A wooden-framed dance mirror is parked in the hallway, where overflow students dance as their feet bang into lockers.

Art teacher Pam Collins' room is piled with boxes of supplies, with little storage or space to walk between desks. Collins wants to add ceramics to the program, but no place to put the kiln.

The band and choir rooms are in truly sad shape, with sagging ceilings, grim lighting and pitted walls.

Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero, a strong supporter of the May 3 bond proposal, said the problem with school facilities goes beyond inadequate technology, citing the “tired” and “dingy” condition of many schools.

“We have the commitment [to students] from teachers and staff, but environment matters too,” Bernero said. “We need send the message to our students that they matter.”

Everett’s cinderblock auditorium is a special target of frustration. Not much has been done to it since it was built in 1960. Clunky stage lights are perched on scaffolding set up among the seats. In the aisles, puke-green carpet is held together with duct tape.

"The acoustics are terrible," Allen said. The proposed renovations would change that.

Among the auditorium’s most serious drawbacks for Allen’s theater students is the lack of a shop area for building scenery.

“We do major productions," Allen said.

"We don't use cardboard backdrops." For a 2013 production of "Sweeney Todd," the students re-created the rotating cube set used in the Broadway show.

"We had to do it in pieces and move it through a standard doorway and put it together on the stage," Allen said.

Allen teaches his theater class in an old English classroom, with no room for actors to get up and move. The video production room is a regular classroom, jury-rigged with curtains and a forest of equipment.

Additions at Everett, should the bond pass, would include a scenery shop, a theater classroom and "real" video studio, with computers and monitors like those used in the burgeoning CGI and visual arts fields.

Everett would also expand its schoolwithin-a-school, NewTech, a project-based model of education.

Everett's NewTech High is a popular program of choice and enrollment is "standing room only," according to Caamal-Canul.

Administrators are at pains to point out that the pathways envisioned by the district, such as Everett's visual and performing arts pathway, will be offered in addition to, rather than instead of, a traditional general education.

Allen gets excited talking about Everett as a "performing arts school," but principal Susan Cheadle-Holt prefers the word "focus." Whether students choose any one pathway as a career goal, Cheadle-Holt said, the “pathway” subjects benefit all students.

"Kids from inner city areas don't have the opportunities other areas have, to take private lessons and so on," Cheadle-Holt said. Everett's VPA pathway "gives them opportunities they wouldn't normally have. It brings kids to school. Kids who normally wouldn't have an interest in school come to dance, or for band."

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STEM to stern

Plans for Lansing's two remaining high schools, Sexton and Eastern, also focus on career preparation.

Sexton High School already emphasizes the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) curriculum. The Pathway plan would keep STEM at center stage at Sexton, but add concentrations on skilled trades, certification programs and community colleges. Planned improvements at Sexton, including a new annex for STEM labs, would cost about $6 million.

Everett High School principal Susan Cheadle-Holt said her school's band room is among several facilities that need renovation, especially for a school focused on visual and performing arts.
Lawrence Cosentino/City Pulse

The most drastic move in the Pathway plan is a wholesale move for Eastern High School, from the oldest building in the district to the newest — the present Pattengill Middle School, which would get significant additions to accommodate the change.

The district sold the Eastern High School to neighboring Sparrow Health System earlier this year, with a clause allowing the school district to rent the campus for five years. Sparrow, meanwhile, has expressed a willingness to consider repurposing the main building at Pennsylvania Avenue and Jerome Street rather than tear it down.

Eastern’s pathway would include its existing International Baccalaureate program, with a curriculum that spans several disciplines, including foreign languages and history; a Chinese language immersion program; and a new addition — biotechnology. Sparrow, as part of the sale of Eastern High School building, will provide biotechnology training and internships at Sparrow.

"The health industry is exploding around the country and around the world," Caamal- Canul told the group at Fairview. She cited Neogen, Niowave, Emergent Biosolutions and the Sparrow Health System as bellwethers of a new economy awaiting Lansing graduates. (The logos of those companies are prominently on display near the entrance at Fairview, a STEM-focused school.)

"This city is really booming," Caamal- Canul said. "We need to provide kids in that pipeline that will stay, work and live in Lansing."

The expansion of Pattengill into the new Eastern High School, with its new classrooms, a new, three-story classroom wing, biotech labs, renovated gym and fitness room, new cafeteria, student services office and community clinic, would cost about $13.2 million.

Everett High School's band room.
Lawrence Cosentino/City Pulse

Eastern's move to the old Pattengill pushes another big domino. Under the Pathway plan, Fairview Elementary, next door to the new Eastern High School, would be converted into a K-8 school for Pattengill's former students and part of the biotech pathway that leads to the new Eastern. That conversion will cost $18.1 million.

About 500 Pattengill students would move to the expanded Fairview, adding to 300 already attending.

New biotech labs are one thing, but the biggest cheer at Caamal-Canul's Fairview talk arose when she announced plans for new, separate drop-off and pickup areas for parents and school buses for the future Pattengill. The traffic jams at the end of the school day are notorious.

'Why create a fight?’

All of Lansing's elementary schools would get general building improvements under the Pathway plan, but three K-8 buildings — Fairview, Rich Visual Performing Arts and Post Oak — would get major additions and renovations, befitting their key places in the "pathway" system.

The plan calls for $16 million to put Rich Elementary School on the visual and performing arts track leading to Everett. Post Oak would convert to K-8 to make the transition seamless for Chinese immersion and certified International Baccalaureate programs, from eighth grade at Post Oak to ninth grade at Eastern.

Each of the three pathways will be open to any Lansing students.

"We will open choice up, district wide," Caamal-Canul said. "Parents and children can choose their pathway, and corresponding school. We'd rather have you stay in the district than go to another district."

The millage plan would also set aside $8.1 million for Eastern High School to get its own athletic field. Caamal-Canul said it's long overdue.

"Eastern has been playing at Sexton for their home games since 1954," she said.

Technology and security upgrades across the district are expected to cost about $7.3 million under the millage plan.

The upgrades include more access points" to the Internet, adding drop-down screens and updating wireless technology.

The last major item on the Pathway list is new furniture district wide at a cost of $8.2 million.

Jim Allen wryly noted that this part of the plan has a serious drawback.

"People who graduated from Everett High School in 1964 and up won't be able to come back and see the desks they etched their names into," he said. "The desks are from the 1960s. They're antiques."

It's not just a matter of age. Allen said the old furniture is ill suited to newer models of education that emphasize shifting group projects and flexibility.

"It matches the way we try to teach in the 21st century, which is not standing in front of the room, lecturing," Allen said.

At Wednesday's pitch, Caamal-Canul was asked a question she hears frequently: Why not keep the old Eastern High, or build one new high school for all students?

She said it would have cost $45 million just to bring Eastern's old building "up to code," let alone outfit the school with biotech labs and other modern equipment.

"We didn't think it would be fiscally responsible for us to invest $45 million in a single school when we have 28 other schools that need our attention too," she said.

Former mayor Hollister said he “came at this wanting a new building” but changed his mind.

Hollister wanted a brand new high school when he compared new schools in Okemos, St. Johns and other suburban areas to “facilities [in Lansing] that were old when I was there 40 years ago.”

But the conversion to a single high school would have serious drawbacks, Hollister said.

“I became convinced it would be emotionally hard for the community,” Hollister said. “The current buildings are strategically located around the city. People are attached to the Quaker, Viking, Big Red label.”

One ward of the city, Hollister said, would win and others would lose.

“Why create a fight?” Hollister said. “This is keeping the best of the old with facilities that make you proud.”

With 4,000 to 5,000 students packed into one high school, Caamal-Canul said, fewer kids would be involved in extra-curricular activities, especially sports, with only one team fielded per sport.

"You'd need 80 acres," Caamal-Canul said. "Where do you put it? And what do we do with Sexton and Everett? The best solution is to upgrade and reconfigure what we have and move forward."

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Big ask

A wide range of local political and business leaders, including Bernero, have lined up behind the May 3 bond proposal.

Dean Transportation President Kellie Dean, a member of the bond proposal committee, called the plan "exceptional."

At Everett's 60-year-old auditorium, there is no scenery shop, lights are perched on scaffolding and seats and carpets are wearing out.
Lawrence Cosentino/City Pulse

Dean credited Caamal-Canul with moving fast to "flip the district to a science, technology, math-oriented district."

"The facilities are designed for the curriculum of the future," Dean said.

Hollister praised Caamal-Canul for “strategically” tying curriculum overhaul with the physical upgrades.

"I've been engaged with 40 [school district] initiatives and a couple of millage campaigns, but this one is fundamentally restructuring how the district is going to function," Hollister said.

Tim Daman, CEO of the Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce, said his organization strongly backs the proposal.

"It's no secret that the district is struggling to keep its students, like a lot of urban districts around the state and the country," Daman said. "Infrastructure investment is critical."

The chamber scrutinizes every millage that comes along and doesn't endorse many of them.

"There are several millages that we've looked at in the past two years where there is no plan whatsoever, or they pit communities against each other," Daman said. (He was alluding, in part, to the Ingham County Trails millage, which the Chamber did not endorse.)

"But the district has put together a solid plan," Daman said. "There doesn't seem to be any waste. They prioritized down from over $200 million to $120 million."

Daman and other chamber representatives toured three schools earlier this year and got a lengthy briefing from Camaal- Canul and school board President Peter Spadafore.

"It's a big ask, but they have specific uses on how it's going to be allocated, and they are to be commended for a solid, solid plan to put before the voters," Daman said.

At the Fairview talk, Caamal-Canul was asked what the district would do if the millage doesn't pass May 3.

"I hesitate to even talk about a Plan B,” she said. “When people think there is a Plan B, they think, 'I don't need to go and vote.'"

But she answered anyway.

"We're going to move forward with the Pathway Promise," Caamal-Canul said. "It could be a scaled down version."

Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope expects a small turnout of about 8,000 to 12,000 voters, about half of them absentee voters. Many absentee voters are seniors, but that doesn't seem to worry the bond's supporters.

"They love their grandkids," Hollister said. "If they don't have grandkids, the people they hang out with do.”

Hollister said that even he and 86-yearold former councilwoman Alfreda Schmidt, a frequent nemesis of Hollister’s back in the 1990s, bonded over the bond. Schmidt also served on the bond committee.

“Alfreda and I banged heads all the time when I was mayor,” Hollister said. “She thought I was a wide-eyed liberal who was going to spend the city into bankruptcy. We developed a consensus and I think the seniors will listen to Alfreda.”

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