School Board Could Vote Thursday on Moving Durham School of the Arts

In the spring of 1923, Durham High School’s graduating class thanked the school board for “enabling it to graduate from the most modern high school in North Carolina.”

“The year 1923 will forever be associated with ‘the new building,’” the seniors wrote in the school yearbook alongside a glowing review of the “honest-to-goodness library” and the joys of having “one’s own locker.”

Now home to the lottery-based magnet Durham School of the Arts, that once-glorious high school campus is still the crown jewel of the county’s public school system. But even with countless renovations—and expansions that now span the entire block—a century and a year have taken their toll, and the school is slated for relocation to a site roughly three miles north of downtown.

In 2022, a $423.5 million bond referendum for eight DPS construction projects won 83 percent of Durham’s votes. Since then, the school board has barreled ahead with plans to build a sprawling new arts campus on a vacant, county-owned parcel of land on Duke Homestead Road.

For the past year, residents of the adjacent Trinity Park neighborhood, organizing under the “Durham for DSA” banner, have argued against the relocation. At two meetings this month, Durham for DSA, alongside other residents, have raised objections to the ballooning cost of building the new campus, bemoaned a botched community engagement process, and argued that the arts school is better off in the heart of downtown.

The relocation, which once had voters’ support, has turned into an uphill battle for a board that seems to have run out of social capital in the wake of the recent financial fiasco that led to the resignations of the superintendent and chief financial officer.

Still, every school board member has publicly maintained support for the project. Following the opinions of DPS staffers, they have argued in favor of moving by pointing to the mandate of the 2022 referendum and the promise of an expansion to Durham’s best public high school. 

In arguments against renovating, they’ve cited the possible sinkhole of unexpected costs and the learning disruptions if the current 1,900 students have to go to school in the middle of a construction zone for the next decade.

The board is poised to take a final vote on Thursday, August 22.

Despite the back-and-forth, one thing is abundantly clear: the existing DSA building does not meet the needs of the academic program within.

“Every room is used every minute of the day,” Mathew Palmer, senior executive director of school planning and operational services, told the school board on August 1. Palmer described that, even with teachers using janitors’ closets for their planning periods, the building is still over capacity by about 200 students. 

Given that DSA is the district’s highest-performing school, DPS plans to expand enrollment upon moving to a new building. But with frequently changing price tags for both new construction and renovation, the board has not made a strong case for the move.

The 2022 bond included $423.5 million to build and renovate the DPS facilities most in need. In 2021, DSA, one of the highest priority items, was estimated to need about $120 million for a new campus. Now, staff estimate it will total between $241 million and $256 million, including $213 million for construction. 

In March, staff estimated the cost of renovation to the existing facility at $371 million. Then, this month, staff revised that cost to an estimate of at least $269 million.

With the post-pandemic fluctuations in interest rates and inflation, consumers are surely used to some sticker shock. Inflation alone, though, does not explain why both the construction and renovation estimates have been so wildly different over just two years.

Residents worry because the more money DSA takes, the less remains for the other projects the bond targeted: in 2023, the administration delayed renovations of four elementary schools because of climbing cost estimates for DSA construction.

Those discrepancies, and a sense of lost faith in the DPS apparatus, led to the creation of Durham for DSA and its renovation plan.

John Hodges-Copple, former planning director at Triangle J Council of Governments, has had three kids and two grandkids enrolled in DPS. He’s been lobbying the board to renovate because he thinks it’s possible to remedy DSA’s existing problems while keeping the school on its historic downtown plot.

“All the things that are bad about the school aren’t actually primarily educational. They’re plumbing and heating and air conditioning and parking … Well we can solve those,” Hodges-Copple told INDY last month. Most importantly, he said, a Durham for DSA plan allows for expanded enrollment while saving the district $50 million. 

At the August 8 meeting, then-interim superintendent Catty Moore pushed back against the feasibility of renovation.

“The plan that community members have brought forward does have a lower price tag than the new DSA. That lower price tag comes with not meeting the programming requirements that have been established for the performing arts school,” Moore told the board. “You would still be spending almost $200 million for a diminished level of programming that doesn’t meet the standards that we have publicly said is what should be in a performing arts school.” 

Moore also argued that a renovation would temporarily close parts of the campus, reducing the number of already-highly coveted student seats and requiring students to traverse active construction sites during their school days.

“To just say you can save money by [keeping the current location] is not a sufficient picture of what has to go by the wayside in order to do that,” Moore said. 

Later, Fredrick Davis II, DPS’s senior executive director of building services, added that the renovation could become a “money pit” if construction starts to reveal hazardous materials, such as asbestos, inside the building.

“While we have tried to make every effort to internalize and analyze the community suggestions, it’s just not economically feasible, nor is it … [professionally responsible], for us to recommend the board move in an alternative fashion,” Davis said.

When the board asked about the difference in price between the DPS estimate and that of Durham for DSA, Davis said that licensed professionals generated the numbers that DPS is using, unlike with the community group’s estimates.

As the months and meetings have dragged on, community members have repeatedly questioned the effectiveness of DPS staff and administration. In public comments for the August 8 meeting, residents charged the staff as “biased” at best and “allergic to accountability” at worst.

Bob Chapman, a Durham developer, wrote in to sound the alarm on the cost estimates:

“I feel [that] it is my civic duty to tell you … that you have been terribly misinformed about what it would cost to upgrade and completely refurbish the existing downtown physical plant of Durham School of the Arts … This number is wildly exaggerated and would not withstand knowledgeable scrutiny,” Chapman wrote. 

And the district’s staff has not exactly provided a bulletproof defense of its work. When INDY asked about the dramatic price jump from 2022, Davis cited “construction inflation” in an emailed statement. 

“The program cost is periodically reviewed and revised due to inflation and market conditions,” added Crystal Roberts, DPS director of strategic communications.

“Public comment gives our communities voice and provides an opportunity for participants to share their opinions and suggestions, so we are accustomed to hearing comments on a range of topics,” Roberts said in response to the criticism from the public.

Matt Kopac, Durham for DSA member who currently serves on Durham’s planning commission, told the INDY in July that the board and staff seem caught in a circular decision-making process that favors the status quo. 

“Elected officials…say that the guidance they’re receiving from staff is that moving DSA is the better option. And then what we hear from staff is that they’re not in a position to reconsider the decision without clear guidance from the elected officials,” said Kopac.

Hodges-Copple added that poor community engagement has compounded the issue.

“This board seems, more than any other, to be totally dependent on what their staff tells them,” said Hodges-Copple. “There is no community group that they turn to as they develop community plans, it’s all tightly held.”

The August 1 meeting was billed as a public comment meeting, but was only publicly announced on July 30. Several speakers complained that it was not properly advertised in advance.

“I don’t have a speech prepared because I learned about this an hour ago and I begged my mom to come with me,” said Lucia Harrington, a rising junior at DSA. “Everybody I’ve talked to is very much wanting to stay in our downtown Durham community.”

“The community was not participatory in this. I think you are aware of that. Perhaps it was planned that way,” said Brian Callaway, a former DPS employee.

The August 8 meeting was held virtually due to tropical storm Debby, so members of the public were invited to submit their comments in writing via a link that was broken until two hours before the meeting. 

Board chair (and DSA alumna) Millicent Rogers said the board was aware of the issue with the link but fixed it in time to collect 34 public comments. 

“All comments are in support of renovating the current Durham School of the Arts Campus,” Rogers said.

During that meeting, board member Bettina Umstead conceded that the board “could do better” with community engagement. Several other members concurred.

“When we had this original conversation, it was 2021 and we were still navigating stay at home orders … and so I can completely hear and understand the need for more engagement,” said Umstead. “I’m sure that that engagement looked different in that time, and I appreciate all the folks who are engaging with us now.” 

Board member Jessica Carda-Auten acknowledged that, despite all the work put into planning the new DSA, “there are a significant number of people in our community who don’t have the confidence in what we are proposing to do.”

Still, at the end of the August 8 meeting, each board member signaled their likely support for the new school project moving forward. They also said that the old building would be used for a to-be-determined educational purpose.

“On behalf of the nearly 2,000 students that are currently served at Durham School of the Arts, and in respect for the will of the voters of this community, I continue to be enthusiastic about supporting the new Durham School of the Arts,” said board member Natalie Beyer.

If the board votes to continue with the new construction on August 22, the old Durham High School building will likely see its last graduating class before 2030, 107 years after “the most modern high school in North Carolina” sent its first class of graduates out into the world.

Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].