When state Sen. Mike Waugh, R-Shrewsbury, first introduced the idea about 10 years ago, I was quick to jump on the bandwagon.

It made sense to me then, and it makes sense to me now, that every new school built in York County (or the state) doesn't need its own look and design distinctly different from all others. Cost, indeed, does matter.

It's a school building, for goodness sakes, not the Taj Mahal, the White House or the Lincoln Memorial. Trying to be different is one thing, but reinventing the wheel each and every time we build a new school is ridiculous.

It's amazing, though, how many people lined up to fight Waugh's proposal.

You'd expect, I guess, to get a thumbs-down on Waugh's plan from architects and engineers, since they make their living from designing and building new schools.

But school administrators? I've never understood that. I'm guessing it has something to do with administrators wanting to put their own thumbprint(s) on their district, so when they retire they can look back on the new schools as their legacy.

No matter how much it costs taxpayers.

That's the thing -- for a long time now, school administrators and school board members have been giving taxpayers' interests too little consideration, particularly when it came to new construction. The difference between a $30 million school and a $24 million school was $6 million, but that was chump change to the people spending the money.

Well, it's not chump change to most of us.

Waugh's

Advertisement
concern has been and still is that design fees ranging from 1 percent to 20 percent of the final cost of a new school -- 20 percent of $30 million is $6 million, for example -- is an unnecessary hit on taxpayers' wallets.

There's no reason why the state Department of Education can't maintain a folder with, say, 30 or 40 proven building designs, from which school districts must select one for their new school.

Waugh says he wants the Department of Education to develop school designs for six different regions throughout the state with a handful of building prototypes for each region, taking cost, culture and a community's character into consideration.

Every building doesn't have to look exactly alike -- use a different color and style of brick, for example -- but they would have to be one of the prototype designs approved by the state.

Naturally, that would save taxpayers a lot of money.

As Waugh well knows from experience, this can't be a volunteer program, either. Since 2005, the state's design clearinghouse has been voluntary, and it's been a big failure. Unless forced to do so, school district officials are not going to build a school that looks similar to a school in the next district, next city or next state.

"It hasn't been working," Waugh said. "I'm tired of waiting."

So it has to be mandatory. Either select from the state's approved list or be prepared to do without a
dime of state funding when the new school is built.

To me, that doesn't seem such an unreasonable burden.

Too often, mandates from the state General Assembly end up costing taxpayers money. This is a mandate from the state that can save big bucks for taxpayers who are already paying through the nose for public education.

Common sense should prevail here. Starting from scratch on the design of every new school building is darned expensive, especially when you consider we already have a number of tried and true designs sitting on the shelf waiting to be used again and again.

Waugh's right -- it's time to get this done.

Columns by Larry A. Hicks, Dispatch columnist, run Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. E-mail: lhicks@yorkdispatch.com.