Berkeley school district delays Longfellow Middle School reconstruction further, costs rise to $80M | Local Schools

The completion date for Longfellow Middle School’s reconstruction has been delayed to June 2028.

The move comes following Berkeley Unified School District’s approval of an updated contract and increase of the project’s Guaranteed Maximum Price to about $80 million at their regular school board meeting April 15.

Dry rot was discovered at Longfellow during a modernization project in June 2024, leading to the building being “red tagged” — meaning it is unsafe to be occupied — causing students and staff to be temporarily relocated to Berkeley Adult School for the following school year. The initial completion date was slated for August 2025.

In January 2025, the renovations’ expected completion date was pushed back even further to July 2027, following the discovery of more structural instability within the school.

Structural issues were found throughout, with damage found on all faces of the three-story building, as well as the gym and administration building. The state architect, who approves all K-12 public school construction in California, asked BUSD to renovate each building separately, according to John Calise, assistant superintendent in the facilities division for BUSD.

“You can’t just take a minor interior modernization and add major structural upgrades to it,” Calise said. “What it turned into was four separate projects that we had to redesign from the beginning.”

Originally, the modernization project sought to simply update the interior spaces. Now, it has grown into a full structural modernization that will include updated windows and roofing, as well as updates to improve the building’s adherence to more modern Fire Life Safety and Americans with Disabilities Act accessibility standards.

Once the construction was approved by the state, blueprints had to be brought together in order for BUSD to bid the project, Calise added. The result of the bidding was the board’s approval of a contract with Alten Construction.

“It took a lot of time to study the buildings, a lot of uncovering and destructive testing, a lot of back and forth with our design professionals and the state,” Calise said.

The BUSD School Board originally approved a Guaranteed Maximum Price of about $21 million for the initial Longfellow modernization project in 2023. That figure has grown to $72.9 million, reflecting “scope additions resulting from unforeseen structural conditions encountered during construction, which required significant design revisions and expanded construction work,” according to the BUSD resolution.

Additionally, there’s a 10% contingency added to the maximum price, resulting in a total board authorization of about $80 million. However, according to Calise, soft costs such as architectural fees and permits put the projects’ total cost trending about $90 million.

All costs for the project are contained within Measure G, a $380 million bond authorization to fund facilities projects, passed by BUSD in 2020.