With school started and dust settled from the bombshells dropped Aug. 31 in the form of Dowagiac’s Educational Dream,“ school board members set to work Thursday morning to devise a strategy for moving their vision of a “one in 100” district down the field and into the end zone.

That dream, developed since February when “Disney Way” author Bill Capodagli immersed Union Schools, City Hall, Borgess-Lee Memorial Hospital and Southwestern Michigan College in Walt Disney’s timeless principles of Dream, Believe, Dare and Do, has now been digested by the community to where the board is getting feedback.

Vice President Michelle Helmuth, fresh from the middle school football scrimmage Wednesday evening in Edwardsburg, said, “The biggest question is funding and financing. As soon as we know (costs) for sure, we need to lay it out as simply and as transparently as we can with the dollars because, bottom line, people are going to love an education plan, but they want to know how much it’s going to cost.”

“We really don’t have a solid answer on that,” President Larry Seurynck said of the plan to shed Sister Lakes, Kincheloe and Patrick Hamilton and consolidate elementary grades in a refurbished 50-year-old Union High, retaining Justus Gage as an early childhood center, adding on to the 2005 middle school to accommodate high school and relocating the administration from the Wolverine Building to City Hall.

“We know where we want to go,” Seurynck said, “but the architects aren’t finished yet, which makes that part hard. One piece we have to look at is extending the bond” which built DMS. “The other piece is performance contracting,” which the board has been studying as a way to save on energy which could be rolled into lowering building costs.

“If each building we stop using created $100,000 a year — and it’s more than that —  that’s $300,000 there, and if we could save $100,000 on energy at the high school, we’ve got $400,000 to service a loan from the state at almost no interest. We would earmark that money and not flow back into the general fund like it does now. Performance contracting allows districts to use money saved through qualified energy savings. It’s got to be certified, so Fanning and Howey will do an energy profile of the high school. If we replaced the windows, here’s how much we’d save. If we put this much insulation in the roof, here’s how much we’d save. The positive side immediately is with the cost of electricity going up annually, we’ll be locked into paying what we’re paying now. But we don’t have hard numbers yet, so we flat-out don’t know. If we ask to re-authorize the bond we have in place for the middle school, there would be no increased cost to the community — just an extension of the current bond. Energy conservation savings can be turned into a funding mechanism for a loan. We could end up with a minimal amount. When we do come up with a number, we’ll have a calculator on our Web site so people can put in the assessed value of their home and see exactly how many dollars a year it’s going to cost.

“It’s very encouraging because the architects are dumfounded at where Dowagiac is. In most districts, a new high school costs an absolute minimum of $30 million and to do one right you’re up to $40 million to $60 million. We’re going to be able to go into the middle school site and the cost of that project will be around $15 million because of all of the things we can share, like science rooms and music rooms. We’ve got the gym built. Media centers will go in the hallways. We don’t have to build a kitchen, only a dining area. We don’t have to build a performance gym, we can build a fieldhouse. I threw $15 million out as the scope of work the architects are looking at at the middle school. But that’s not near where the bond would be because if we can extend the current bond, we can lower that amount down and again through performance contracting energy savings.”

Superintendent Dr. Mark Daniel said, “Say, you needed $18 million. That’s an estimated increase in debt levy of two mills. A home with a $40,000 taxable value, an $80,000 home, amounts to $80 a year.”

“There’s a state cap that you can only spend 3 percent of your household income on property taxes,” Seurynck said, ”so most of our retired seniors on fixed incomes aren’t going to see any increase whatsoever. These numbers are hugely encouraging. And this is more about an educational mission than it is a building.”

“Going to Edwardsburg and seeing the schools all on one campus, it’s a benefit,” said Helmuth. “It’s a wonderful plan, but the reality is what it is going to cost.”

Seurynck said the educational advantage of one elementary building is consistency in instruction, instead of “funneling in with a different level and differentiation. Everybody could be expected to come out with the same set of skills. We can have continuity from pre-K through graduation without so many variables. I think the cap of what our students can achieve is lower if they’re all in different buildings.”

Helmuth agreed. “We’re truly going to take best practices and implement them in one place. You’ve got folks comfortable with ‘country’ schools, then you’ve got ‘inner-city’ schools. Best practices are going to be the driving force behind one town school to improve test scores. You’re not going to lose anything with one site, you’re going to gain. That’s security as a parent.”

Claudia Zebell brought up the possibility of enrollment loss to a charter school if Sister Lakes shuts.

Seurynck responded, ”What we are going to offer, though, is an educational program that exceeds anything that’s possible with a charter school. We’re just going to be the best school. If people want to go to the best school, they’re going to pick Dowagiac because we’ve got a focused plan with best practices and consolidated resources. Right now, we’ve got highly skilled people disbursed across four buildings. Put them all together and that plan will hum. Competition’s what it’s all about, and we’re going to have a stronger product for about half of what other districts are spending to modernize.”

“Our first focus group with information should be our teachers and administrators,” Helmuth said. ”That’s who’s going to affect our families” in accepting the plan.

“That’s why I’m so excited about the way contract negotiations went,” Seurynck stated. ”We’re building an atmosphere of trust. We’ve long said we’re here to give teachers the tools they need to teach our kids. If we can go into modernized facilities with all of the amenities in place for the strongest atmosphere they can have to teach, there are great advantages. This district could then be done with capital projects for the next 20 years.”

Daniel said, “We know our high school needs to be reconditioned” whether it houses elementary students or not. If the original boiler goes out, it could wipe out the district’s fund equity.

“If we’re looking at heating, why not cooling, too? Our galvanized water piping has run its life. Those are huge infrastructure projects that have to happen one way or another. (With a 900-amp service) us adding computers and running technology is a problem.”

That said, ”It’s still a solid building” whose life could be extended another 20 to 30 years of life with its roofing.

Ronda Sullivan said constituents questioned her about job loss through consolidation.

“It will greatly help with class sizes,” Seurynck said. “We can take the total number of (elementary) students and distribute them evenly. I don’t think we’ll lose any jobs other than through attrition. You still have the same number of students. This wouldn’t happen until 2015, so we can plan this out and massage our way into it and not rehire if someone retires. There aren’t going to be 20 or 30 pink slips. Nobody will get fired.”

Daniel added, “Right now, we have 10 or 11 first-grade classrooms, which could probably go down to 10, balancing your numbers rather than one building having 29 and another having 16.”

”Eliminating people is not the focus of the cost savings,” Helmuth said. ”Our goal is to increase enrollment,” although the state places restrictions on building to make it “right size” plus 15 percent.