This story originally published online at the 9th Street Journal.
At a cost of approximately a quarter-billion dollars, the new Durham School of the Arts will be the most expensive public middle or high school built in the Triangle area and likely in the state, an analysis by the 9th Street Journal finds.
The new school’s base price is an estimated $241 million—$643 per square foot—according to Durham Public Schools. The cost is higher still—$256 million—when additional items such as athletic fields are included. That’s far more than most comparable North Carolina school construction projects.
The school board voted on Thursday to approve on the proposal to move DSA to a new campus, rather than renovate the current site. The item was placed on yesterday evening’s consent agenda after action was postponed from an August 8 meeting.
The school district defends the project’s costs.
“DSA is currently in line with estimates and budget numbers based on programming and market conditions,” Fredrick Davis, DPS senior executive director of building services, said in an email response to the 9th Street Journal. “Construction continues to become increasingly expensive due to market conditions and current construction inflation.”
Construction costs certainly have risen in recent years. A North Carolina Department of Public Instruction report found that in 2020, the average construction cost for N.C. schools was approximately $249 per square foot. Based on the report, the state’s most expensive school project as of 2020 was Fuller Elementary in Wake County, at a cost of $294 per square foot.
The state report only includes projects through the fall of 2021. At that time, N.C.’s most expensive high school came in at $288 per square foot.
Even given rising construction costs, though, the price tag for the new DSA is lofty. While some recent school projects have topped $400 per square foot—and two recent N.C. projects, one in Wake and one in Charlotte, cost more than $500 per square foot—most school construction budgets are less than DSA’s estimated cost of $643 per square foot.
Durham arts school is priciest
DSA has been the subject of fiery back-and-forth between the district and the community, with some community members advocating for renovating the current DSA at its downtown site rather than building a new school. The group Durham for DSA created a counter-proposal—a renovation plan for the current site the groups says will cost approximately $180 million.
Given the controversy, the 9th Street Journal compared DSA’s price tag with other N.C. school construction projects, seeking information on costs of middle and high school construction projects since 2020.
State data is scant after 2020. To find more current information, we contacted school districts in the Triangle and surrounding areas as well as school districts in two major metropolitan areas, Charlotte and Greensboro.
In the greater Triangle area, we contacted Wake County Public Schools, Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools, Orange County Schools, Johnston County Schools, and Chatham County Schools. We also contacted nearby Guilford County Schools and Alamance-Burlington Schools. Finally, we reached out to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, which recently passed a $2.5 billion bond referendum for school construction.
We also consulted government documents, local news coverage and sites of contracted architectural firms. We will continue to update our findings as new information becomes available.
While a perfect one-to-one comparison is not possible, the new DSA stands out among recent and current projects for its total cost and per square footage cost.
How DSA stacks up
The district emphasizes that DSA is a specialized arts school, which comes with special costs.
“It is a comprehensive middle and high school with additional programming for the arts. In a presentation to the board in December, administration showcased other districts with similar estimates and budgets for comprehensive high schools,” Davis said in response to a question from The 9th Street Journal.
On December 14, 2023, Calvin Stevens, a consultant from CATE Services & Construction, presented the school board with a slide comparing costs for the new DSA with school projects in Wake County and Charlotte-Mecklenburg. Only two listed projects included square footage costs, and one of those figures is now out-of-date.
The Wake County projects include Felton Grove High School and Parkside Middle/Wake Early College of Information & Biotechnologies—listed on the DPS presentation as “H-12” and “M-19 Middle and High School,” respectively. (Wake County Schools confirmed that “H-12” refers to Felton Grove and “M-19 Middle and High School” refers to the Parkside/Wake Early College project.)
Plans for the Parkside/Wake Early College project are in flux. A community meeting tonight will consider a plan to flip the construction sites, which will reduce costs.
Wake’s new Felton Grove High School will accommodate 2,223 students, similar to DSA’s target enrollment of 2,200. Despite the two schools’ similar enrollments, Felton Grove High School will cost $543 per square foot, according to DPS, compared with $643 per square foot for the new DSA.
The DPS presentation also compares DSA with four Charlotte-Mecklenburg projects: East Mecklenburg High School, North Mecklenburg High School, Harding University High School and Second Ward Medical & Technology High School. The presentation lists the total budget for the Charlotte projects, which range from $177 million to $228.5 million. It does not include the projects’ cost per square foot. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools was unable to provide cost per square foot for the projects, which are in the early stages.
A different approach to magnet arts schools
Not included in the DPS comparison is a Charlotte-Mecklenburg project to create a trio of magnet arts schools. The plan entails converting Northwest School of the Arts into an arts high school and First Ward into an arts middle school. A third school, an elementary school with a separate construction budget, will share the arts focus.
With middle and high school renovations totaling $93.7 million, Northwest School of the Arts/First Ward will cost $301 per square foot—less than half of DSA’s $643 per square foot estimate—while providing a specialized arts education for students in grades six through 12.
The Guilford County school district is also creating a specialized arts school, but with a more modest budget. The district’s plan to renovate Swann Middle into an arts school for grades six through 12, at a cost of $78.4 million, is currently in the design phase.
Unlike Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Guilford, DPS will likely move forward with new construction rather than renovation.
While board members and community advocates have asked for more clarity on costs of building a new DSA versus renovating the current site, all board members indicated support for building a new school at the board’s August 8 meeting.
District officials have said that renovating the current DSA would be more costly than building a new school.
A DPS study presented on August 1, based on data from CATE, found that renovating the current school would cost about $269 million. Community members have questioned the methodology used to calculate that cost.
Funding for DSA comes from a $423.5 million bond referendum passed in 2022. At a cost of at least $241 million, the new DSA will consume over half of the bond amount, and as a result, renovations have been delayed at several local elementary schools.
John Hodges-Copple, a member of Durham for DSA and a retired planning director, said he was not surprised to learn that building a new DSA is such a pricey proposition.
“Your findings confirm that building a fancy DSA in North Durham instead of transforming the downtown campus will require sweeping funding away from elementary schools that voters supported in 2022,” Hodges-Copple said in an email to the 9th Street Journal. “Maybe that is what Durham wants, but why not ask the community which they prefer? That seems more like the Durham way of doing things.”
This story was published through a partnership between the INDY and 9th Street Journal, which is produced by journalism students at Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy. Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com.
