In May I returned home to Australia, armed with an exercise book full of costs, estimates, available materials, notes from discussions with builders and suppliers, and notes from the interviews with Karrus and many of the staff about some school realities. I spent several weeks trying to see if I could rationalize the estimated building costs somehow. It seemed to me that using the conventional materials and construction techniques, we would need at least half a million USD and possibly 1M to build the final bells and whistles school. This included several classroom blocks, several dormitory blocks, library, hall, kitchen, dining, bathrooms for hundreds of boarders, science block, admin, staffrooms, a small medical wing, teacher housing for 30, generators, plumbing and water, toilet and treatment for 700+, storage areas, fitouts, electrical and land clearing. We could get off the ground with a simple phase 1 for maybe 200K.
As a sanity check I met online (skype) a couple of times with both Celina, and the wonderful Cori Stern. Cori is the woman who arranged funding and volunteers to build the Carolyn Miller school in the first place. Cori made a couple of astute observations that resonated with me immediately: firstly that if she were to engage in another similar project, she would explore alternative materials, and also that yes, the estimates did sanity check. All in all the day school had cost a few hundred thousand, taking everything into account. I was also conscious that the farm would also need to be designed, built and equipped: more costs. And the monthly outgoings (salaries and supplies) were still to be factored in.
More to think about.