Superintendent Dennis Stockdale knew last September that the 90-year-old Garrett High School didn’t work for the 21st century instruction its students were receiving. Most classrooms have just two electrical outlets – impractical in a school where a MacBook laptop is issued to each student.

The building doesn’t meet all Americans with Disabilities standards. Its cramped classrooms don’t work for the collaborative project-based learning that goes on there. Hallways are narrow and restrooms antiquated.

But Stockdale also knew he had just one chance to sell a construction project. The struggling economy last fall wasn’t the best time for it, and so he decided to wait until early 2011, before the farming community was busy with planting and when as many people as possible could take part in deciding between renovating Garrett or building a new school.

So, how did the superintendent find himself just weeks later riding on the fender of a tractor, selling a high school project to one of the district’s biggest property owners?

It’s a unique story of how the Garrett-Keyser-Butler district’s unwavering support for its schools, Stockdale’s vision and a generous portion of pure chance all came together to produce a new cutting-edge high school, the only high school now under construction in Indiana.

The story begins in 2008, when Stockdale took over as superintendent of the 1,100-student Garrett-Keyser-Butler Schools and was advised by his predecessor, Alan Middleton, that addressing problems with buildings should be high on his agenda.

Stockdale first tackled an upgrade of J.E. Ober Elementary School, financed using federal Qualified School Construction Bonds. The bonds, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, offered bondholders a tax credit in lieu of interest payments. The effect was to significantly reduce the borrower’s cost for school construction projects, which were targeted at districts with high enrollment of students on the free- and reduced-price lunch program. For $2.6 million, the improvements at the elementary school are expected to extend the use of the building for 20 years.

The superintendent then turned to the high school, a hodgepodge of additions tacked onto the original 1922 building, with the most recent improvement made 13 years ago.

“We started looking at the high school because it is not conducive to 21st century learning – at all,” Stockdale said. “Some of the classrooms in the ’22 section are just 600 square feet. Just try to get 20 high school bodies in there – they don’t make a wall-stretcher.”

Around May 2010, Stockdale said he learned from the district’s bond counsel, Jane Herndon of the Indianapolis legal firm Ice Miller, about Build America Bonds, another stimulus program that could be used to finance a construction project.

But a decision on what direction to take was still undecided. He said he wanted the board to continue weighing options until the spring of 2011.

“One reason I wanted to do it in the spring was to get (the plan) before the farming community – that’s a very important part of our community – before they have to start getting out in the fields. Then we could get everybody together and get a good dialogue going,” he said.

Fateful encounter

Stockdale’s approach was derailed when he ran into Herndon at an Indiana School Board Association meeting in late September.

“She said they were getting the word out of Washington that the Republicans, if they take control of Congress, were not going to reauthorize the Build America Bonds come Dec. 31.”

The project calculus changed instantly. Stockdale quickly pulled together his board members, who were at the conference, and had Herndon explain the political situation.

With assurance that there was just enough time to meet the legal requirements, including a public hearing followed by a 30-day remonstrance period, the board asked him whether he could put together a proposal.

What followed was a whirlwind 14-week process in which the district decided to build rather than renovate, chose an architect, created a proposal, sold the plan in community meetings and sweated the bond market before it sold its own Build America Bonds – with just two days to spare before the stimulus program expired and the chance to save $1 million in interest payments evaporated.

Crunch time

After the chance meeting in Indianapolis, district officials jumped into action to find an architect who would gather ideas from faculty, staff and the community and put together a proposal. Good fortune intervened again to bring Schmidt Associates, an Indianapolis architecture and engineering firm, on board.

Tom Neff, a former Fort Wayne resident who had experience designing a New Tech high school for Decatur Township schools in Indianapolis – the first school in the nation designed especially for the project-based New Tech model – is the chief architect.

Garrett-Keyser-Butler, despite its size and rural setting, is consistently at the leading edge of education improvements. Under Superintendent Middleton, the schools instituted a quality improvement model in 2001 that emphasized leadership and personal responsibility, steadily raising achievement. Garrett earned bronze-level recognition on U.S. News & World Report’s 2007 list of Best High Schools.

Stockdale has continued the push, carrying out the Project Lead the Way engineering program, establishing innovative partnerships and this year, undertaking a one-on-one technology program in which the district, on the first day of classes Wednesday, distributed an iPad to every student in kindergarten through grade six and a MacBook to every student in grades 7 to 12.

At graduation time, the top 10 seniors are rewarded with MacBook computers for college, a program Stockdale began with his own personal contribution.

The match with Schmidt Associates was inspired. The firm uses advanced technology in its design process, but also has an appreciation for history. When community meetings revealed regrets for the demolition of Garrett’s railroad depot, a Heritage Committee was established, and Neff worked with it to incorporate the community’s rich railroading history. Garrett’s athletic teams are known as the Railroaders.

“It seems like everybody in town has some connection to the railroad,” Neff said. “So we’ve wrapped this high-tech, zip-bang learning environment around a railroad depot. It’s not a big building, but what it has to offer is incredible.”

A no-lose deal

Indeed, the $16.8 million project is relatively modest. When Northwest Allen County Schools expanded Carroll High School in 2008, the price was $59 million.

“The board made a decision, ‘let’s put together a plan, let’s not talk about wants, let’s talk about needs,’ ” Stockdale said. “What do we need today to improve?”

The austere budget helped Garrett officials sell the project in the tight window they had available. At a football sectional game just days before the public hearing, brochures were handed out to detail the project with key points, including:

•The project would reflect the history of the former school in its design, as well as pay tribute to the history of the railroad industry in the community. The entry hall is reminiscent of the town’s original depot.

•New construction would include only academic space, preserving the existing cafeteria, gym and auditorium.

•The new school would be more energy efficient.

•The proposed bond issue includes all costs, including financing.

Stockdale said cost was a key. The proposal showed an annual property tax impact of about $16 for owners of a home assessed at $100,000. Farmland owners would pay about 61 cents an acre.

“The way our assessment is in Indiana, the bottom line is that the people who can get hurt are the farmers, with the complex formulas for their assessments,” Stockdale said. “So we didn’t sugarcoat it. We let them know what the maximum payment was.”

The impact on farm owners was how Stockdale found himself, on an October day, riding along as a farmer took a group of children on a tractor ride to a pumpkin patch. Other school board members and former board members also jumped in to sell the project to a cautious community. It worked.

“We had about 3 1/2 weeks communicating with our community (before the Oct. 25 hearing),” Stockdale said. “We had about 130 people show up. We did not have one person speak against the project – everybody spoke in favor of it.”

In the 30-day remonstrance period that followed, not one person picked up a petition in opposition – unbelievable in the midst of an economic downturn, but a testament to the community’s support for education.

Stimulus goal met

The superintendent and his board had another condition for the project: It had to ensure local vendors had equal opportunity to bid on the project. Again, they were successful. Last week, the worksite was busy with local skilled workers. More will be on the job as the steel beams are raised.

Fort Wayne-based Shambaugh & Son is handling the project’s mechanical work under the direction of Nick York, a 1989 Garrett graduate. Another foreman is Tim Knott of Knott Drainage & Excavation, a 1983 graduate, and his daughter and son-in-law are both teachers there.

“I’m thrilled to be working on this,” Knott said. “In all of my career, this is probably the one I’ll remember the best.”

Fetters Construction, the general contractor, is based in nearby Auburn. Henry Electric, a subcontractor, is owned by a district resident. Dan Lapadot, project manager for Henry, also lives in the district.

“I don’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat, you’ve got to believe the Build America Bonds did just what they were supposed to do,” Stockdale said. “I think there is no better example than what we’ve got here. We’re the poster child for the stimulus project – local people with jobs, spending money in our community, improving a school here.”