There's a better way, and we found it.

For a project of this size and scope, many eventualities need to be planned and budgeted for. The magnitude of changes caused by staging Thurston on the plan as a whole are minor - just the black boxes and arrows to the right. Logic and experience suggests that these would have a minimal impact on the overall project cost and time because:

• This would not be a costly, unplanned delay where people, supplies and equipment are sitting around unused but already paid for. There are 6 months before construction begins on New Thurston and 30 before it begins on New King. Changes in cost & scheduling for a planned delay are much, much smaller and can be mitigated.
• People and equipment are on-site at Thurston for 2 years instead of 4, saving that time and money for the rest of the project.
• Moving Thurston and King back by 2 years each actually helps balance the work-load more evenly across the schedule. Instead of 5-7 new constructions during the 2025-2027 school years, there would be 4-6, plus 1-2 major remodels. 2027-2029 would see no change, as King moves out while Thurston moves in, and 2029-2031 would go from 2-3 new constructions to 3-4 plus 3 major remodels. This allows contractors and resources to be better utilized, which typically saves money.
• While any delays in construction can have substantial escalation costs, this is less of an issue because of the way the bond and sinking fund are paid for. For example, delaying 2 buildings costing  $40M each by 2 years, in a period where inflation is roughly 3%/year will nominally cost about $5M more over that period, which is not an insubstantial increase, even in comparison to the total $1B bond. However, the bond is paid for through a variable millage on property values, and since those have been increasing more quickly than expected over the past few years, the current fixed (sinking) and target (bond) millage will bring in more revenue to offset increased costs over time, moving together with the escalation costs in lock-step. The important thing is to act before the specific bonds for funding new Thurston construction are issued, which is expected in March 2025, so that interest isn't being paid and penalties accrued on the money that is financed but unspent for a few years.

The combination of the sinking fund and the bond allows for a lot more flexibility in the budget than just the bond alone, which is one of the reasons they were combined in 2019 when the bond was voted on. Even then, the combined expected revenue from these sources was roughly $200M short of the needed funds estimated for addressing the aging buildings. To address this, AAPS' plan stated that a future sinking fund should be passed to help cover the rest. Staying strictly under this arbitrary $1B cap was never the plan.

If it really is preferential to manage more new construction earlier in the schedule, then construction on a different school could be pulled up in order to minimize overall impacts. Hypothetically, Carpenter Elementary (red box) could be shifted earlier by 2-3 years, vacating the period that King is moved into while addressing the building that is listed as #1 in the district's facilities condition assessment priority list more promptly. Alternatively, Wines and the 4 other schools that rely on staging at old Wines could hypothetically be moved forward a year (purple boxes), shortening the total duration of the entire project through phase 3.

Here are the facts: 

• New Logan is only 0.5 miles away from Thurston (0.6 miles driving directly).
• Most neighborhood kids will still be able to walk to school at New Logan. 
• Bussing between New Logan and New Thurston would be unnecessary.
• Kids who currently take the bus will only have to travel an additional 0.5 miles. 
• Parents who drive their kids to school will need to commute an extra 2-3 minutes. 
• The change in location makes a total of 6 new houses that were not covered before eligible for bussing. 
• There is no way that these changes will cost anything like $5M (as stated in MLive article). 

New Logan and new Thurston schools are both being built with the same student nominal capacity of 552 kids and maximum capacity of 624 kids. However, the current Thurston community currently uses 26 classes total - 2 pre-K / Young-5 rooms, 3 self-contained (ASD) rooms, and 21 K-5th grade classes, which won't fit into the 24 K-5th + 1 pre-K room that new Logan is being constructed with. Fortunately, the current Thurston population isn't who needs to fit, the 2027-2029 population is! 

The combined 10 classrooms of the current 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade classes will have graduated to Clague by the time Thurston would need to stage at new Logan. During that same period, school-of-choice and in-district transfer enrollment could be managed for Thurston to keep the number of incoming classes to 3 rooms each. This does not affect the self-contained classes at all, assuming that as students graduate from these rooms this capacity is maintained for incoming kids. With this simple change, the current Thurston community remains wholly intact but can now fit into the new Logan building.

New Logan has one fewer pre-K room than Thurston would at this time, but considering that all the classrooms in the new buildings have attached bathrooms, adding the additional sink or accommodations to one room cannot be difficult or costly, and may benefit the Logan community as it is expected to grow tremendously over the next decade.

But it's also unfair to only subject Thurston to a learning environment right next to the distraction of construction for 3-4 years. Which of the options is worse when considering the outcomes for the three schools together?

With staging, the footprint of the new and current buildings could overlap substantially, even after adding in all the site improvements such as a separate bus loop, more drive-line distance, more parking, and the fire access lane around the building. 

• The school would have shifted slightly further north, but nowhere near as far as the district's current plan calls for. 
• The building would serve as a natural divide between the vehicle infrastructure and play spaces.
• Much less of the site area would be in locations that would be harder to monitor during recess and thus are wasted.
• The building itself would be further from the pond in an area that has historically been much less wet, reducing flooding risk or flooding mitigation measures necessary.
• Geothermal loops could go under the play fields equally distant from the pond.
• Most of the site north of the school would be untouched. Many of the existing playgrounds could even be preserved if so desired.