School District Slows Plans to End Ring Mountain School’s Lease

Nearly two dozen community members packed into a conference room at the ’s offices Wednesday afternoon, pleading with the school board to halt plans to terminate the private school’s lease on the district-owned building it occupies.

The outpouring worked, at least for now, as the board agreed to wait until at least its as-yet-unscheduled meeting in July before making a decision on the matter.

“There are still some question marks here,” said board member Raoul Wertz.

District officials brought forward a recommendation to give Ring Mountain the required two-year notice to terminate its lease, which was signed in June 2004. In doing so, officials tentatively plan to move the district’s offices, which currently occupy 8,053 square feet on the site of the , into around 9,193 of the 11,000-square-foot building that houses Ring Mountain on Lomita Drive.

The move is vital to accommodate the district’s continued enrollment boom, particularly at the Middle School, where the district is installing four new portable classrooms this summer, according to Tim Ryan, the district’s director of maintenance and operations. The idea is that the district offices would vacate that campus, potentially landing the Middle School another 8,000 square feet of classroom space.

If the shift occurred, the district would lose approximately $290,000 in revenue from that lease in the 2014-15 school year, Ryan said. But that revenue loss would be far outweighed by the additional expense to rent office space, Ryan said.

Ring Mountain leases its building from the district for around $2.07 per square foot. Ryan said a search for nearby office space turned up nothing for less than $5 per square foot.

“As a public entity, we could not justify renting out a facility for that much less than it would cost us to rent space for district offices,” Ryan said.

If the district moves its offices into the Ring Mountain building, the school would have to vacate by July 31, 2014, with the district reclaiming the space for the 2014-2015 school year.

But district officials stopped short of calling the move a done deal, saying that the notice was needed to investigate it and its possible alternatives.

“This just gives the district the possibility to explore the idea,” Superintendent Paul Johnson said.

Despite that sentiment, Ring Mountain supporters said the two-year notice would amount to a death sentence.

“I’m not sure the school could withstand a move in two years,” said Ring Mountain board member Michael Imperiale. “Giving up the space we have right now really puts us in a difficult situation. We would have to contemplate closing the school.”

Sarah Flowers, who was , said Ring Mountain’s admissions would suffer as word spread to prospective families that the school needed to relocate and its future was in doubt.

“We can’t live with the unknown of where the school is going to be,” she said.

Several Ring Mountain supporters urged the district to stop short of terminating the lease and further explore alternatives such as occupying only part of Ring Mountain’s space. The building also includes 5,000 square feet that houses and Van Pelt Construction Services, the project manager for the .

“They’re saying that from an admissions standpoint, they won’t be able to sustain the school – that’s pretty compelling,” said board member Steve Sell. “It sounds like doing something starts Ring Mountain down a path that is pretty hard to turn around.”

“I just don’t feel as if I would be capable of making a decision on this right now,” added board member Bob Jacobs. “I’m not in the business of closing down schools.”

Board members asked staff to further investigate a clause in the lease that calls for the district to repay Ring Mountain all of the money it spent beyond $158,000 on building improvements. Ring Mountain parent and board member Karen Lefurgy said school officials don’t yet have the exact amount they’d spent over the past eight years but said it was at least four to five times larger than that trigger.

“Ring Mountain has been a good tenant and has certainly survived a lot,” Lefurgy said. “We’re kind of the like the little engine that could. But this one is going to be very hard for us.”