Weilheim: All-day schools are twice as expensive for the city

Created: 07/22/2022, 12:00 p.m

By: Magnus Reitinger

The new building for the lunchtime care at the Ammerschule was only opened in 2018.

Now he's too small.

© rudder

The city of Weilheim is facing huge investments in the Ammer School.

In the medium term, a new building is needed for afternoon care, which will cost several million.

And as early as 2023, an interim building should be ready.

So far, neither of them has appeared in the financial plan.

Weilheim

– How the city should pay for all this is still completely unclear.

But it is clear that she has no choice but to create the spatial conditions for lunchtime and afternoon care at her elementary schools.

From 2026, parents will gradually have a legal right to such all-day care.

And the demand is already high: At the Weilheimer Hardtschule, where the open all-day school (OGTS) was introduced in 2018, around half of the around 400 students are currently there in the afternoon, as the main committee of the city council said on Wednesday.

After-school care is now less in demand, and the trend is clearly towards “open all-day” schools, explained Stefan Popp, who is in charge of elementary schools and childcare facilities on the part of the city administration.

Ammer School: Afternoon care "is bursting at the seams"

The Ammer School, which currently has around 300 pupils, also wants to expand lunchtime care or introduce an open all-day school.

The school management informed the town hall at the end of March.

The location, the space requirements and many other questions will soon be clarified with all those involved in a so-called "planning phase 0" (we reported).

The work for this phase, which precedes the actual planning, has just been awarded by Weilheim's building committee to the Munich office "bauwärts" at an offer price of a good 25,000 euros.

Two years ago, this already oversaw citizen participation in the new development area north of Geistbühelstraße for the city.

Whatever the result of "Phase 0": A new building for the OGTS will be needed at the Ammerschule - the general renovation of which was barely two years ago.

And that will cost several million euros.

In the Hardtschule, as city treasurer Christoph Scharf recently reminded us anxiously, “an expansion project came about in the preceding phase, for which we now have 13 million euros in the financial planning”.

The city has not yet budgeted any funds for the Ammer School.

Meanwhile, the existing lunchtime care at the Ammerschule - the new building of which only opened in 2018 - is already "bursting at the seams", as they say.

With more than 100 children, the capacity limit has been reached, children already have to be "rejected", reported city architect Katrin Fischer in the main committee: "The building was simply designed for the needs of the time, and times have changed."

City builder wants to “take the pressure off of things”

According to the city administration, an interim solution is therefore necessary until a new building is built in five years at the earliest.

You have to “take the pressure off of things,” said Fischer.

It is proposed to build an interim building next to the existing lunchtime care, which should be ready for occupancy in September 2023.

This could be a rented wooden modular building or container.

However, the order would have to be placed this year, and around 800,000 euros would have to be planned for the construction in the 2023 budget.

Then there would be the rental costs – also for the following years.

Mayor's Appeal: "Weigh well"

The city council must now “deal with it intensively” and “think carefully” whether the whole thing can be afforded before the legal entitlement is introduced, said Mayor Markus Loth (BfW): “But we all know that the parents’ desire for afternoon care there is.” The need is understandable, added Tillman Wahlefeld (BfW).

But with the idea of ​​entering a "phase 0" for a new building and "at the same time spending so much money for an interim solution", he says, he is "a little tough" at first.

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The provisional should last as long as possible

Nothing was decided during this first discussion in the committee.

One possible way is to set up an interim building that should be usable for at least seven years and thus gain some financial breathing space.

Wouldn't it be possible to simply expand the modules of a temporary solution later and thus obtain a cheaper permanent solution?

"Unfortunately, that doesn't work," the city architect replied to this question from Petra Arneth-Mangano (SPD).

Either way: "We can't just look at the money now, we have to make sure that the children are well accommodated," emphasized Arneth-Mangano.

Similarly, CSU spokeswoman Marion Lunz-Schmieder: "We have to find a solution for all budgetary problems.

The parents would not understand that there is an OGTS at the Hardtschule and not at the Ammerschule.”