Facilities changing, master plan the same

By Pete Kendall/reporter@trcle.com

GODLEY — Godley was projected to be among the fastest growing school districts in the Metroplex five years ago.

Superintendent Paul Smithson knew that when he was hired in 2004-05.

Then a funny thing happened — for Godley, a good thing.

“The first year I was here, the projection was we were going to grow 5 to 6 percent,” Smithson said. “Well, we lost 5 to 6 percent. There was no reason. It just happened. We knew growth was coming. We could look all around Godley and see other people growing.

“But when we lost enrollment, we bought ourselves some time, about two years. The next year and the year after, we started growing again. We got involved with a demographer about three years ago when we knew we were about to outgrow our facilities. We started our planning process and went through all the scenarios. We decided the best thing to do was use the land we already have.”

Godley revamped its facilities but not its education master plan.

“We like the way our campuses are split up,” Smithson said. “We like our pre-K through 2, 3 through 5, 6 through 8 and 9 through 12. We want to keep those age groups together. Fortunately, we had enough land that we already owned that we ere able to do that. Our next step is probably adding an elementary school, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”

The key step in the entire building process was the community’s passage of a $27.8 million bond in May 2008.

“Our community is very supportive,” Smithson said. “You’re never going to make everyone happy, but we went into this with the idea that we were going to make our oldest building [the so-called Alamo, Godley’s intermediate school] the centerpiece of the district. We’re taking the old building back to its original look. It’s going to be beautiful.”

Likewise, the intermediate school extension, joined to the Alamo with a wing and with quarried stone outer walls so it resembles the original building.

The district was able to tackle every construction project it intended, Smithson said.

“We wanted to add on to the intermediate school. We’re doubling the size of that. We’re remodeling the current intermediate school. We’re adding on to the elementary school and building another PE facility at the elementary. We’re adding a band hall at the high school. We’re renovating the middle school. We built a weight room at the middle school and resurfaced the track. The last phase is to add on to the ag facility at the high school. We’ll get that done.”

The projects have remained on schedule. Most will be completed by the start of school in August. The intermediate school construction will be completed in phases ending in December.

“Some have been over budget and some under, but overall we’re good there,” Smithson said. “If we were starting right now, we’d probably come in under budget because there aren’t as many construction projects out there now. We’re getting more bids.”

The projects required considerable planning over a period of several years.

“We sat down with our architect [Huckabee of Fort Worth] and went through a lot of scenarios,” Smith said, “what cost is now, what the normal escalation of cost would be. We built in a percent of escalation per month, and that really helped. We got the construction manager involved in the budget to see if we could do something better for less cost. When you’re building, you always have contingencies. You always find things you didn’t know were there, especially in remodeling.

More good news for Godley: Although demographers predict future growth for the district, they don’t predict it will all take place at once.

“We’re not looking at 10 to 12 percent a year,” Smithson said. “We’re looking at 2 to 4 percent growth per year.”

The present construction should carry Godley ISD close to 10 to 12 years into the future, Smithson added.

“We’re in good shape right now. We hope not to have another bond election for as long as possible.”