Every fall at Pleasant Grove High School, there's a smell in the air, and it's not new bookbags or the school's ovens kicking on for the first time since spring. It's bat feces.

While the Alpine School District is busy letting patrons know what they stand to gain from a proposed $230 million bond and a voted leeway, some parents at Pleasant Grove High are wondering why their piece of the pie is so small and doesn't address the elevator shaft where bats take up residence seasonally.

Board of Education and district officials spent the last two weeks visiting with each of the district's 67 schools' faculty, PTAs and community councils talking about the renovations and additions the money would buy, said board president JoDee Sundberg. They also are making presentations to city leaders and civic groups ahead of the Nov. 7 election, and a series of meetings this week at district schools are open to the public.

"We're going to different groups so we can reach as many people as we possibly can to let them know about the bond," Sundberg said.

Pleasant Grove High School parents say while the $12.5 million remodel their children's school would get under the plan is generous and needed, they can't help but compare their share to Orem High's proposed $25.75 million rebuild.

"Our building can't just be left like this for another 25 years," said Karie Cooper, mother of four. "Our old section has got to be looked at."

Sundberg said a district-wide seismic study and recommendations from architects that Orem High was not worth remodeling are the reasons why the rebuild was added to the list of bond projects in March. The building was slated to get a $9 million remodel similar to the one planned for Pleasant Grove High with the proposed bond money before experts suggested it would cost $10 million to $12 million to bring the building up to seismic code, she said. "We just felt why would we be putting those dollars into a school that's more than 50 years oldfi"

Pleasant Grove, American Fork and Lehi high schools opened around the same time in the early 1950s, district spokeswoman Jerrilyn Mortensen said, and all have had significant remodeling. In the last bond in 2000, Pleasant Grove High got a new kitchen, cafeteria, commons area and air conditioning, she said. Orem High opened a few years earlier.

Under the current proposed bond, Pleasant Grove High School would get new wrestling and band rooms, a permanent structure to replace its satellite building that houses 28 classrooms and new tennis courts. But parents say the school, with an enrollment of about 1,685, has more students than Orem High's 1,262 -- and comparable needs.

Cooper said because the two schools are about the same age, she wonders why Orem High's seismic needs are more pressing. "If they put a new addition on one end of the building, it leaves us wondering about how safe is the rest of the building, if Orem needs to be torn down to be seismically up to code."

An elevator shaft in the two-story building at PGHS has become a home to bats, who visit in the spring and fall, said principal Jess Christen. Exterminators have told Christen that the bats will always come back because of their migration pattern, he said.

The smell of bat feces is sometimes overwhelming, and last week, a bat got loose in the school, Cooper said.

Cooper said she would like to see the district replace asbestos tile, broken steps and outdated bathrooms in the school, and address the bat issue.

Community council member Amy Hall said any remodeling at the school will be "another four-year Band-Aid before we have to tear it down.

"I know Orem has a need, too," Hall said. "I walked the halls of Orem, and it's horrible there too, but I feel like we should have the same."

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D1.