The planning for Westview’s Robotics & Engineering CTE Building project began in 2018 when Rheia Alschbach, PUSD Director of Capital Planning, and the Poway Unified School District (PUSD) facilities department visited multiple campuses to gather feedback directly from school communities.
“We had an architect firm come in, which worked with our facilities department and me,” Alschbach said. “We went school by school and held meetings with the principal, a group of students, and the community. [We asked] facilities-wise, program-wise, what are the things that could use improvement? What are some of those needs you see, and what are some of those wants?”
Those conversations helped Alschbach and her team construct a long-range facility master plan to be presented to the PUSD board of education. The plan serves as a blueprint for how a school or district plans to use, improve, and build its facilities over 10–20 years. Jessica Kimbrell, Director of Facilities Design and Construction, explained how these plans are important for new projects.
“The long-reach facility master plan really helped create the roadmap for us in terms of everything [in the] facility,” Kimbrell said. “One of the things that’s challenging is that Westview is one of the newer high schools. And even though Poway and Mt. Carmel got upgraded about the time that Westview was built, those facilities are still aging quicker than Westview. So we need to really find that balance between maintaining our existing facilities and figuring out how we can incorporate new buildings to support the newer programs that are being created.”
One of the major long-term priorities identified in Alshbach’s master plan was to create specialized classrooms for CTE programs at Westview.
“The principal at the time, Mrs. [Tina] Ziegler, and Darcel Glover, the assistant principal, brought it to our attention that they were concerned about space on campus,” Alschbach said. “So, we looked at the site utilization. In our department, we track every school, every classroom, and how it is used. And then we look at the enrollment. We project enrollment, so we determine ‘is their request valid? Do we see growth at your school? Are the classrooms being used efficiently and effectively that it makes sense to add more classrooms?’ [And] when we went through the facility master plan, it came up again from staff and students and parents that CTE was growing, that engineering was growing, there weren’t enough classrooms, or the right type of classroom to support that, and students couldn’t enroll in it like they wanted to because of that. So that’s what helped us add that as a priority project for us.”
Funding for this project came from community facility districts (CFDs), or Mello-Roos taxes. When developers build new housing, they work with the district to determine how many schools will be needed to support incoming students. Homeowners in those developments then pay a special tax, which is legally restricted to funding school facilities. Westview is supported by seven different CFDs.
“That special tax is split across every house and pays into a fund that supports new school construction,” Alschbach said. “When we need new schools or we need to expand schools, we sell special tax bonds to support that construction. So in this instance, because [Westview] is already built, we still collect taxes to pay off the bonds that we’ve sold in the past, and any extra money that we have, we use on projects.”
Because CFDs are tied to specific communities, not all schools have access to the same funding sources. Jessica Kimbrell, Director of Facilities Design and Construction, said this does not mean the district prioritizes one school over another, but rather that funding availability determines how projects are paid for.
“It’s hard because on the CFD side we have so many new homes, we have so much extra money, [but] on the other side of the district, east of the 15, it’s not the same situation,” Kimbrell said. “They don’t pay CFDs, so we use the money that we have from the district budget to repair things. [What] comes from the Westview area [from] the CFDs only goes to the Westview area. So it’s not that we are picking and choosing which one makes the most sense, it’s where the need is, and we try to find the money for it at that time.”
However, Alschbach pointed out that different schools need to move money around in different ways in order to fund certain projects.
“Every district is different in [its] CFD money,” Alschbach said. “I know how much money we’re going to get from special taxes and then how much we need to put aside to pay off debt. For instance, when the Westview project came up in 2019, we thought it was going to be a $6 million project. So I started to think, I’m gonna at least find $6 million to put aside. As we start going through the project and determining what those costs are going to be, I start making sure that those particular accounts and those particular CFDs can fund it, and then go from there. So, we are fortunate in the sense that your school, in particular, didn’t have to sell bonds; that we had money on hand from previous bonds, from extra surplus special tax funds we had to use. But for a school like Del Norte, when we did that big project at Del Norte, we had to sell bonds first. So that’s the difference.”
While the building cost is $17 million, the actual construction contract was significantly lower. The full $17 million figure includes what are known as “hard costs” and “soft costs.”
“The building, the contractor will say, was a little over $10 million,” Alschbach said. “[A] project has what they call a hard cost, which is the actual cost to construct the facility, and then the other part of that is soft cost. Soft costs include architects, consultants, inspectors, furniture, campus painting, and additional improvements such as work done on Westview’s pool. Industry standard for hard cost versus soft cost is usually a 70% hard cost, 30% soft cost split.”
Originally estimated at $6 million in 2019, the project’s costs rose significantly due to external factors.
“COVID happened,” Alschbach said. “Price escalation was 20 to 30%. The wage rate has gone up 35% to 40%. Tariffs, all of those things, play a factor in why the building costs what it costs today.”
Once funding was secured, the design process began with heavy input from staff, administrators, and industry partners.
“It’s bringing the people in who actually are gonna use that space,” Alschbach said. “It’s bringing in the CTE partners, those executives, those directors to say, which programs would you really have in here and what does that look like?”
Alschbach said the goal was to create a building that could adapt over time.
“One of the things we wanted to make sure [of] is that it was flexible in the sense that if engineering wasn’t the big thing next year, even though we have a fabrication shop, other classrooms could go in there and still feel comfortable,” Alschbach said. “That was the biggest thing, making sure it was a flexible space, but making sure [it] supported engineering at the same time.”
Architects presented multiple layouts before a final design was chosen, ensuring the building fit seamlessly with the rest of the campus.
“You don’t want it to stick out like a sore thumb or seem like an afterthought,” Alschbach said. “You want it to look intentional and like it has always been a part of [the campus].”
For district leaders, despite the complex budgeting process, measuring the success of this project isn’t solely by numbers. Alschbach said the value of the project lies in student experience.
“We’re here for the benefit of the students,” Alschbach said. “All it takes is one class to make a difference for your whole life. To be a part of creating spaces for students in that way, I think that’s the success. That somebody’s enjoying it, and it’s making a difference in how they’re learning.”
