SCA Capital Plan: Atlantic Yards middle school to open Sept. 2025. New $170.7M cost suggests 32.4% jump over previous figure (& twice one earlier estimate).

The School Construction Authority's (SCA) November 2022 update of its FY2020 – 2024 Capital Plan has been published, and it updates/confirms previous information that I.S. 653, the 806-middle school being built in the base of 662 Pacific Street (B15, aka Plank Road), won't open until September 2025.

The school has the address of 491 Dean Street. Representatives of Empire State Development, the state authority that oversees/shepherds the project, and master developer Greenland Forest City Partners have, at public meetings, proven uninformed about the school timetable. 

I've suggested that elected officials should probe the delays in the school, not just the start of the tower, which was announced and then delayed, but why the school will open nearly four years after Plank Road opened to residents.

Now there's another issue.

Costs rising

Notably, the cost has ballooned to $170.72 million (see below) from the previously estimated $128.91 million (see further below), an increase of $41.81 million (or 32.4%) more. That's a leap from past small increases, and more than double one earlier estimate (for a smaller school), as described below.

That means that a $67 million funding request has been added to the previous appropriation of $91.92 million, while earlier only $25.65 million was requested. That leaves $11.79 million needed to complete the project.

Now, it seems, it also would be worth probing how much the delays increased the costs. In other words, had the school been built earlier, might there have been tens of millions of dollars otherwise deployable?

Previous numbers

As I wrote in October, the SCA's February 2022 Capital Plan indicated that the school should open in March 2025. (Here's the page for all the updates.) That date, in the second half of the 2024-25 academic year, was surely unrealistic, because they don't open schools mid-year.

That $128.91 million figure represented a minor increase from the $126.15 million in the February 2019 capital plan, three years earlier. Note that the capacity, as of February 2019 was 640 students, but in November 2019, the capacity increased to 812 from 640, a 26.9% increase. The total cost barely budged.

So is the latest increase a belated recognition that costs would go up with a change in the school configuration? If so, that's a distinct failure of prognotistication. If it's a recognition of newly higher construction costs, well, they should tell us.

Previous estimates

There's clearly a cost to delay. As I wrote in June 2018, previous iterations of the Capital Plan listed lower figures:

• February 2017: $114.29 million
• March 2016: $91.1 million
• January 2016: $83.07 million

I noted that the previously planned larger hybrid school, with 757 seats, had a somewhat larger budget: 

• Spring 2015: $103.66 million
• February 2014: $103.66 million

Where money might come from

Given that the current plan ends in FY 2024, or the middle of that year, it's not implausible that the additional funding would come in the next five-year capital plan.

Or, alternatively, it could come from city and state elected officials, who have discretionary funding. From the new SCA document:

The Plan’s total appropriation of $20.1 billion during its five-year term will support the DOE/SCA’s goals of improving educational performance and sustaining its diverse portfolio of existing facilities in good repair. Forty-four percent is for the Capacity category.

Thirty-nine percent of the total funding is targeted toward capital investment in basic facility needs and enhancing school facilities — both system-wide and to support specific instructional programs. These programs include technology improvements, safety enhancements and other general improvements to the learning environments. The remaining 17 percent is dedicated to mandated programs.

To complement Plan funding, both City and State elected officials allocate additional capital funds for specific projects at individual schools. These funds are targeted towards a specific school’s needs in areas such as technology, science laboratories, sports/athletic fields, playgrounds, bathrooms, and other quality-of-life facility upgrades/enhancements. The typical total funding allocated by the City’s elected officials ranges from $100 million to $200 million annually.