A team of architects from the firm ACI Boland gave the Jefferson City Public Schools a "C" letter grade, in an appraisal they recently did for the district's Long Range Facilities Planning Committee which met Thursday night.
The district's elementary schools performed marginally better than its secondary schools, but both sets were rated "satisfactory" overall by the architects who used a rating system suggested by the Council of Educational Facility Planners International.
Michael Kautz, principal architect, said he and a colleague toured all the district's facilities, meeting mainly with principals, to gather their concerns. He said the appraisal tool - essentially a scorecard - is subjective, but used all over the country to evaluate school buildings.
"We're comparing these facilities to new buildings that are being designed today," he noted.
Among the district's 11 elementary schools, only one - Pioneer Trail - was deemed "excellent" and eight were deemed "satisfactory."
But West Elementary School and East Elementary School are teetering on the border between being acceptable and unacceptable, earning scores of 60.7 and 57.4 respectively.
(Interestingly, within Jefferson City, the two schools perform at opposite ends of the state's accountability standards' spectrum, with West Elementary earning 97 percent of the points the state awards for academic achievement and attendance and East Elementary earning 52.9 percent.)
The Southwest Early Childhood Center is considered a "special building." It earned a 77 rating and was deemed "satisfactory."
Among the city's six secondary institutions, the architects consider three of those buildings "satisfactory" and three of them "borderline."
The older the buildings were, the worse they performed. The three "borderline" schools were Simonsen 9th Grade Center, the Jefferson City Academic Center (JCAC) Building and Jefferson City High School.
Among the concerns the architects raised about the high school were: the difficulty of maintaining the aging building and problems with its structural and mechanical features. For example, the architects awarded the school 6 out of 10 points for being "free of friable asbestos and toxic materials" and a 4 out of 10 points for a "building envelope that generally provides for energy conservation."
The school earned 9 out of 15 points for having "adequate, convenient wall outlets, phone and computer cabling for technology applications."
The report also noted that the high school only has one chemistry lab for 1,926 students. Architects also estimated the capacity of the high school at 1,878 students, which means it's beyond its capacity by 48 teens.
At Thursday's meeting, the committee - charged with planning for the district's future facilities needs - also discussed how they might address the seven professional academies being launched at the high school.
The conversation about the academies was among the most-heated topics discussed Thursday night.