On August 27th, 2024, the brand new Benson campus officially opened for the 2024-2025 school year. Benson finally had A/C, proper seismic retrofitting, new equipment, a cafeteria space that wasn’t underground, and brand new classrooms that were built for each major. The new school was going to be perfect.
But after nearly half a billion dollars, and seven years of planning and construction, Benson still wasn’t finished. Students were in the building, but many of the CTE classes were unable to conduct regular teaching, as the brand new equipment they depended on wasn’t installed, approved, or operational. In court documents from an ongoing lawsuit between PPS and Andersen Construction, PPS noted that Benson wasn’t even “substantially complete” until May 2025.
One class affected by the remodel was Construction. A major improvement with the new shop space is the new dust collection system. Luke Hotchkiss, a teacher in the shop, said “they made sure that it was gonna pull enough air and the contaminants in the air out of the system and that it wasn’t gonna burn down and kill children in a fire, which I would agree are the two most important things when designing it.”
Unfortunately, the dust collection system is something of a double-edged sword, as machines won’t get electricity if it isn’t running. “[At the start of last year] The dust collector that is up on the roof didn’t work, and if that system doesn’t work, that means none of our major tools down here work, so we could only use hand tools. […] that will be a problem in the future, intermittently, when problems occur with it.”
Having the machines’ electricity tied to the dust collection also causes another problem: machines unexpectedly turning on. If a machine is running when the dust collection is shut down, it will start up again the next time dust collection turns on. This is especially dangerous because the 80 decibels of noise from the dust collection system can mask the sound of running machinery. Hotchkiss voiced significant concern over this; “Somebody’s gonna walk over to one of [the saws] at some point, assuming that the saw’s off, but it’s gonna be running, and they’re going to cut part of their body off on the saw because of the negligence of what’s been constructed.”
One specific machine is especially impacted by these dust collection problems. In the back of the shop there is a CNC machine that, by Hotchkiss’ estimate, costs at least $100,000. Each time the dust collection shuts off while it operates, there is a risk of the machine being damaged, which would be an incredibly expensive mistake — much more expensive than simply switching the panel that the machine is connected to.
He also criticized some of the management decisions made with the building. “Talking to some of the workers, and even some of the lower-level middle managers, the sense is that they genuinely believe in their hearts that the project was haunted by ghosts, which I believe is an excuse made for lack of proper management.”
Jacob Patterson, the KBPS instructor, also gave his perspective on the new building. “Speaking as a teacher and as a student that went here, the new Benson is magical. It’s like a college campus.” He specifically highlighted the Commons area as a major boon to the school’s sense of community. Patterson also called it a major improvement over the “dungeon-like cafeteria” that existed in the basement prior to the remodel. But despite his praise of the remodel, it was not without its consequences.
For several months at the start of the 24-25 school year, the Radio class had to operate out of an unused science classroom, while every other major was at least able to enter their spaces. Having to run a class focused around audio production without any recording studios had a major impact on the students’ experiences and education, and Patterson specifically said that the delays and lack of studios was “heartbreaking” for the Class of 2025. Being a radio station, KBPS poses a unique challenge to contractors, as it requires broadcast engineers to vet the final steps of construction. However, these crucial engineers can only work a few hours a week due to budgetary constraints. Even now, parts of the KBPS building, such as the video recording studios, are still unfinished.
Yet another teacher who has been impacted by the new building is Kristen Mico, who teaches video production and serves as an advisor for the Orbit. While the large classrooms and new equipment in the Digital Media space is more than welcome, one of the most important rooms was rendered unusable. “We had plans for a video production studio which has a beautiful white seamless wall for really creating different environments with light. It’s really necessary for interviews, recording dialogue, and making a lot of movie magic happen, but unfortunately it’s one of the loudest rooms in the building, so I can’t even really use it for what it was built to do.” The noise comes from the ventilation ducts in the ceiling, which have no auditory isolation from the room itself.
As a consequence of the problems and delays that came with the new construction, PPS and Andersen Construction, the company that did the remodel, have filed lawsuits against each other. This may delay fixing the building’s issues. Mr. Booker, an Electric teacher with over 15 years of experience in the construction industry, commented that “Construction always ends up in a legal case.”
