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Dust, fumes, noise and asbestos forced 1,000 students at both schools out of the building for five months last winter.
The report by District Inspector General Jayme Naberezny said the project was beset by “a series of critical missteps.”
The report said moving SLA into the Ben Franklin building was undermined by the fact that the district didn’t renew SLA’s lease on Arch Street, creating an unrealistic construction deadline with no “Plan B.”
One thousand students at the two high schools were displaced for five months last winter when late running construction to co-locate the schools created noise and dust and revealed asbestos in the Franklin building.
The report said that “alarm bells” sounded by many during the project were ignored.
Joyce Wilkerson, the school board president, called the report on the $50 million project “deeply problematic.”
“The board deeply regrets the students, teachers and staff at Benjamin Franklin High School having to endure a year of school learning in the conditions described in the report,” Wilkerson said at a Zoom conference with reporters.
“Already over the course of the past year, multiple steps have been taken to improve the functioning of the operations department,” Wilkerson said.
Superintendent William Hite said he’ll use this "teachable moment" to improve construction procedures.
“As I’ve said all along, I regret how these projects were handled,” Hite said. “But I especially regret the ways in which they impacted our students, staff and respective school communities.”
Among the steps Hite said the district has already taken are hiring a construction manager to oversee large projects, hiring more operations department staff, and identifying swing spaces where students could be relocated if necessary.