Edna Maguire Hosts Design Meeting Tonight

With a school board vote on the new $36 million Edna Maguire Elementary School campus set for Sept. 14, the Mill Valley School District is hosting a public review tonight of the project's latest drawings. The meeting will be held in the school's multipurpose room at 80 Lomita Drive.

The massive project will be built in phases so the school can stay open throughout and is expected to kick off with demolition of the existing school site next summer. It will completely overhaul the school's 54-year-old campus, which wouldn't meet building and safety codes if built today, according to Tim Ryan, the district's director of maintenance and operations.

While the project intends to upgrade an aging facility, it also hopes to accommodate the district's continued growth. While district enrollment rose from 2,712 in 2009 to 2.835 in 2010, a 5 percent gain, the district has added about 500 students since 2004. The new campus will accommodate 600 students, nearly 200 more than were enrolled in 2008.

"That's a whole new school," Ryan said. "But we haven't built a new school. No other district is experiencing the growth we are in California, let alone in Marin. We are victims of our own success."

The 70,000 square-foot project will include new classrooms, a gym, library, administration building and multipurpose room in place of the 51,132 square-foot current building. It will be paid for by the November 2009 passage of Measure C, the $59.8 million bond measure that also fund upgrades to Old Mill, Tamalpais Valley, Strawberry Point and Park elementary schools between now and 2013.

The bond also paid for this summer's access ramp renovations at Mill Valley Middle School. Measure C is expected to be the first of two bonds—the second will likely come in November 2012 with the goal of raising another $70.5 million to go toward rebuilding the middle school. Ryan estimates the district will eventually need to raise a total of about $217 million—down from an original estimate of $300 million—to fund all the upgrades necessary to keep the district modern and competitive.

"The thought was, think big first, then whittle it down," Ryan said.

Though the district has conducted an enrollment study, "it's not an exact science," according to Ryan, and there are still plenty of unknowns. The district will reassess its needs and goals in 2011, he added.

The Edna Maguire expansion concerns some neighbors who already feel the encroachment of the new Whole Foods on East Blithedale. Bruce Berlinger lives near the school, and served as the head of the beautification committee at Edna Maguire for nine years. He said he worries adding more students to the school will increase traffic on "tiny two-lane roads" into and out of the residential neighborhood.

Fellow neighbor Kira Keane helped organize a community meeting in May with representatives from Whole Foods, the school district, and city and county officials. Residents raised a host of concerns about parking, traffic, and bicycle and pedestrian safety. Keane said she hopes the school district continues to work closely with neighbors, the city and the county, which is responsible for the unincorporated Alto-Sutton neighborhood.

Dave Griffis, a parent representative on the school's site committee, said he remains concerned about the project's encroachment on field space.

"It's amazing that even with the amount of fields that we have [district-wide], they're always booked," Griffis said. "There are two little league fields that are going to be built on for certain…and those fields are open space for the kids right now, the play space."

Despite concerns, there are plenty of highlights. Berlinger said he's happy to know local students will be educated in a "state-of-the art" facility, even if that means the mosaics he and his wife helped students create are dug up and recycled.

"For me, one of the most exciting things is the treatment of support spaces—like special education and reading and learning assistance—on equal footing with classrooms," Ryan said. "In California, those kids tend to get the leftover closet. So our kids who need those services will feel on equal footing."

Van Pelt Construction Services, which managed the massive upgrades at Tamalpais High and Redwood High, is overseeing the design and construction of Edna Maguire. Norgaard estimates a working construction document won't go to the state for approval until sometime in 2011.

"At this point, nothing is written in stone," Norgaard said. "People say, 'Well, what about this?' Or, 'Can we modify that?' And the answer is, yes we can."

In addition to tonight's meeting, the board will take public input on the $4.6 million improvement at Old Mill School Thursday at 6pm at 352 Throckmorton Ave. and on Sept. 7 at 6pm at Tamalpais Valley School at 350 Bell Lane for that school's proposed $4.5 million upgrade.