In May 2009, the School District of Clayton Board of Education convened Wydown Tomorrow, a group of parents and community members, to study options for addressing facility needs at Wydown Middle School. Bond Wolfe Architects and S.M. Wilson & Co. were hired to work with this 16-member advisory group. The committee held its first meeting on June 16, 2009 and presented its findings to the Board of Education on Nov. 18, 2009.

The Board charged the Wydown Tomorrow committee with:

• Studying options for addressing facility needs at Wydown Middle School
• Gathering community feedback 
• Presenting a final report summarizing feedback received on various options for Wydown
• Developing options that will keep the school at its current location
• Cost less than $40 million
• Provide space for an enrollment of 550 students
  

Wydown Tomorrow, with the support of the District’s communications staff, worked to keep students, parents, staff and community members informed of its progress. The committee conducted its business in public meetings and posted meeting materials on the Web. In addition to meetings, the committee used a number of different methods to inform and gather feedback from the community. Providing the opportunity for the community to tour Wydown Middle School proved to be one of the most effective means of illustrating the school’s challenges. Over 250 people provided feedback throughout this process.

The committee gathered information on the limitations inherent in the existing building and site. The constraints created by the current building and site limited, to an extent, the number and type of options that could be explored. One of the first steps taken to quantify the needs at Wydown Middle School was to compare the existing facility to the Missouri School Improvement Program’s (MSIP) school facility guidelines and standards. Past studies, including a space analysis and several conceptual design studies, completed in 2001, 2007 and 2008, have documented the limitations and shortcomings of the existing building and were also used in the committee’s analysis.

The limitations imposed by the size of the Wydown Middle School site (4.7 acres), the need to maintain a functioning school throughout construction, the lack of adequate staging and lay-down space and an already over-crowded parking area combine to create some significant, but not insurmountable, construction issues. The committee carefully considered the need to continue to educate Wydown students during construction. The committee also explored temporarily relocating all or part of Wydown’s programs to an alternate site as a way to ensure continuity of education during construction.

Throughout the course of its work, Wydown Tomorrow developed and reviewed 10 architectural schemes, in addition to re-evaluating the Facilities Master Plan concept, for addressing Wydown’s facility needs. All schemes were essentially a variation on one of two themes:

1. Keep part of the existing building and add/renovate space to address needs
2. Build a totally new school on the current site
   

The two options included in their report represent what the Wydown Tomorrow committee feels are the best possible solutions to the two approaches identified above. The committee examined budget, program, constructability, scheduling, impact on surrounding neighbors, phasing and continuity of education issues for all viable schemes. Further analysis of the two options being brought forward, along with analysis of the eliminated schemes, is detailed in the following pages of their report.