Quail Run About to Get a Little Bigger

Quail Run Elementary School is about to become the most populated campus in the Dougherty Valley.

School officials on Tuesday OK'd a plan to add two small classrooms with attached restrooms and custodial space, tacking on $400,000 to the cost of a larger expansion project. This includes $220,000 for construction and $180,000 for planning costs.

, something that the San Ramon Valley Unified School District has been tackling in recent years as new homes crop up.

The latest construction expenses are in addition to the planned $1.4 million, four-classroom expansion at Quail Run the school board approved five months ago, bringing the total add-on cost to about $1.8 million.

The project will be paid for out of the $3.9 million in developer fees that the board projects it will have by the end of this fiscal year.

The district said the new additions will be used to give extra space and a “home-base” for special education students.

Right now, special needs students have to to jump from school to school because their classes are spread out at many difference campuses.

Quail Run is one of the few San Ramon Valley schools with the capacity to be a special education hub, according to the district.

The two new rooms will house “pull-out programs” and special ed courses including vision, speech, Individualized Education Programs and serve as a meeting spot for parents and school staff.

The district will save money in the long run by housing programs on campus instead of paying more to have them at other sites, it says.

Also the design is supposed to make future conversion of the storage spaces into restrooms if needed because the plumbing and electrical will already be in place.

It's similar to what the district did last summer at San Ramon Valley High School, where it converted a storage space into a bathroom/changing room for a cost of $85,000.

This conversion allowed the district to put an end to a $100,000/year non-public school contract.

The new additions at Quail Run are expected to bring the school’s population to 1,322, making it the most populated elementary school in Dougherty Valley.

The district said it hopes to have designs finalized by fall next year so that construction can begin in 2012.