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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes - 09-25-2000APPROVED MAY 1.2001 MINUTES ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION CHAPEL HILL-CARRBORO BOARD OF EDUCATION JOINT MEETING SEPTEMBER 25, 2000 The Orange County Board of Commissioners met in regular session on September 25, 2000 at 7:30 p.m. at the Southern Human Services Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. COUNTY COMMISSIONERS PRESENT: Chair Moses Carey, Jr., and Commissioners Margaret W. Brown, Alice M. Gordon, Stephen H. Halkiotis and Barry Jacobs COUNTY ATTORNEY PRESENT: Geoffrey Gledhill COUNTY STAFF PRESENT: County Manager Jahn M. Link, Jr., Assistant County Manager Rod Visser and Clerk to the Board Beverly A. Blythe (All other staff members will be identified appropriately below) ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION MEMBERS PRESENT: Chair Keith Cook and members Kopert tsateman, ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION MEMBERS ABSENT: Brenda Stephens and Delores Simpson ORANGE COUNTY SUPERINTENDENT: Randy Bridges CHAPEL HILL-CARRBORO BOARD OF EDUCATION MEMBERS PRESENT: Chair Elizabeth Carter and members Nicholas M. Didow, Gloria Foley, Valerie Foushee, Maryanne Rosenman, Roger Waldon (arrived at 9:45) and Teresa H. Williams CHAPEL HILL-CARRBORO SUPERINTENDENT: Neil Pedersen NOTE: ALL DOCUMENTS REFERRED TO IN THESE MINUTES ARE IN THE PERMANENT AGENDA FILE IN THE CLERK'S OFFICE. ALL RECORDINGS OF THE MEETING WILL BE KEPT FOR 5 YEARS. OPENING REMARKS Elizabeth Carter made opening remarks thanking the County Commissioners for the opportunity to talk about their need fora 9th Elementary School and also funding for additional students. Keith Cook said that he appreciates the opportunity to come together with the Board and talk about some things that are important to them now and also to talk about some issues that may have some budgetary impacts. Chair Carey said that meetings like this provide an opportunity to air out issues and get a better understanding of what the issues are and the next steps for moving things forward. 1. CountylOCS/CHCCS Discussion/Policy Issues a. School Capital PlanninglFundinq Task Force Discussions Jahn Link gave an overview of this item. Donna Dean distributed a yellow sheet, "Clarification of Policy on Planning and Funding School Capital Projects," which summarized the discussions that took place during the meeting of August 17, 2000. She summarized the information on the yellow sheet. Several concerns that were expressed at the August 17, 2000 meeting were addressed on this sheet. She said that the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School Board selection involved earlier. He would like to see the County Commissioners be fair to both systems. He said that if it is the site that determines the difference in cost for Elementary School #9, then the site needs to be brought into the process earlier. Commissioner Brown said that she agreed with Neil in that they need to look at standards. She asked if Scroggs was a tier 2 and if Pathways was a tier 2. Neil said that they scaled back from a tier 2 by 5,000 square feet and Pathways was a tier 2. Commissioner Brawn compared Scroggs' fees to Pathways' and asked if that was the difference in using an architect as opposed to having apre-design and Neil said that the majority of the difference would be architectural, but that some would be OWASA or other fees. Commissioner Brown asked what was included in each category of building a school. She made reference to the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance and asked how the capacity for each school would be determined and if the capacity numbers could be modified. Neil said that at Scroggs Elementary they built a school for 590 but they have made a commitment for a smaller class size in that school and that is why they have reduced the capacity to 510 students. He said that when you lower class size, you lower the capacity of each school. Some of this is not fully in control of either board. He said that it was important to consider how the capacity could change and how this could impact how the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance is managed. Commissioner Jacobs asked about the guidelines for the school sites and if it would be easier if the size was adjusted. Neil said that the size of the school sites certainly could be revisited. The standards are pretty close to reality. He feels the guidelines are very reasonable. Superintendent Randy Bridges said that for the new high school and Pathways, Orange County adhered to the state standards for size of the site. Commissioner Halkiotis feels it would be important for County staff to put down the pros and cons of prototypes versus unique design, assuming everything else is equal. Commissioner Brown made reference to the page listing the schools and the cost of 15.6 million for the next school. She asked about the three million-dollar increase. Neil said that there were a number of reasons. He feels the chart should be reworked because the $715,000 for the multi-purpose gym is not part of the model. He feels the percentages are identical between the model and Scroggs Elementary and Elementary School #9. Scroggs' budget was 14.2 million dollars and if you take out the gym for Elementary School #9, it would be 14.8 million. No additional costs have been factored in due to the site. Commissioner Brown said that she would like to see the costs become closer for the different schools. Nick Didow said that the square footage far Pathways was 85,282 as opposed to the model, which is 95,000 square feet. He said that Pathways was 10,000 square feet under the planning model they were working with for Elementary School #9. Commissioner Brown said that she was looking at the standards. She did not understand that when Scroggs was built that there were adjustments to the standards. She feels it important that the County Commissioners know when adjustments to the standards are made. Donna Dean summarized the last three concerns on the yellow sheet. Commissioner Brown made reference to concern #5 and asked why there was only one Commissioner representative and Chair Carey said that it was partly because of the workload of the County Commissioners. Commissioner Gordon said that she wonders if the County Commissioners were going to continue to support the standards that have been adopted. If the Board is going to revisit these, she feels it is important that it is done in a way that is clearly articulated and in a collaborative fashion. Nick Didow said that the school board was certainly willing to revisit the standards. They have suggested that there are some construction elements not included in the standards that they would like to discuss and add to the standards. He feels it needs to be done as quickly as possible. He does not want to do anything that would delay the building of Elementary School #9. He would be prepared to meet immediately to revisit the standards. The school board feels that they need Elementary School #9 yesterday. Commissioner Gordon said that it was important to the County Commissioners to bring down the cost of schools as low as possible. The County Commissioners want to work with the school systems to bring the costs down. Susan Halkiotis said that the tour of Pathways might be good to take before the standards are revisited. She supports getting on with the discussion of the standards and thinks the tour needs to take place sooner than later. Nick Didow extended an invitation for the Commissioners to tour Scroggs and East Chapel Hill High School phase one, because it was built for what the Orange County schools plan to spend for their new high school. Commissioner Halkiotis said that the current standards were extremely generous. He said that the Commissioners had never been cheap in regards to education. Bob Bateman said that he agreed with Commissioner Halkiotis. The County Commissioners have funded the schools generously. The County Commissioners supported the schools in every instance. He feels that the current standards are very generous. He wanders why an Elementary School would have to be built that would cost 3 or 4 million dollars more. Chair Carey feels that the schools systems should use the standards until the Board revises and adopts new ones for planning purposes. If the County Commissioners have concerns about specific areas, they will ask the school systems. The next step will be a final revised draft of the Policy on Planning and Funding School Capital Projects that will be prepared and shared with both schools systems and then approved by the County Commissioners at a regular meeting. PragramlStafflFacility Initiatives with Significant 2001-02 Budgetary Impacts Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools: Chapel Hill School Superintendent Neil Pedersen distributed a memo and said that this summarized the issues of the budget requests for 2001-2002. Commissioner Brown asked about the committee looking at overcrowding strategies and asked for an update. Teresa Williams said that the work was very preliminary and the committee is pursuing a number of avenues, but is not ready to make a report at this time. Nick Didow made reference to other possibilities for alternative schools and said that the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School Board has discussed the possibility of providing several alternative schools. The Phoenix Academy is one program but there are many other programs for reaching middle and high school students. With each possibility come cost implications far staff and facilities. Commissioner Jacobs encouraged the two school systems to work together an alternative schools. He feels that it is important to look at ways the two school systems can collaborate, and when they look at sites that are on the border between the two school systems, it may be the time they can provide services for students in both systems. He said that he was told a few years ago that Chapel Hill would be built out within a few years and he wonders how much more growth is expected. Elizabeth Carter said that the amount of growth is unknown. Neil Pedersen said that Chapel Hill is clearly not built out and that children are moving into the area. There is still quite a bit of land within the school district that is developable. Commissioner Brown made reference to page 17 (Attachment 4d-1}and asked about average daily membership and Neil Pedersen said that he would provide that information. He said that the 20-day average would be lower than the enrollment figures for the 20t" day. John Link asked about the overcrowded conditions in the middle school and if the overcrowded conditions will be alleviated with Smith Middle School. He asked how Chapel Hill- Carrboro City School Board is using mobile classrooms. Neil said that they have 21 mobile units - facilities," that the County should be included. This statement is specifically on page 12 of agenda abstract #1. She just wants to make sure that the County is represented. She feels that it is very important to have a County representative if the County is considering a joint park to be developed from the monies set aside for joint park planning. John Link feels that the County would be included in any undertaking. It was decided that the intent was clear. The wording will be worked out and added to include the County Commissioners. The next step is that the County Commissioners will discuss, make same decisions, and ask the other jurisdictions to make comments and provide input on the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance. John Link commended everyone who had a part in developing the ordinance. He said that it was one of the best ones that he had ever seen. He thinks it will be very understandable for elected officials, developers, and the public. He urged everyone to read the ordinance very carefully. Bob Bateman said that he has been to a couple of public hearings on the ordinance and some concerns have been identified and he asked if the concerns would be addressed. Two of the concerns are district representation and school merger. He was talking about Shaping Orange County's Future and not this item. Roger Walden came in at this point at 9:45 p.m. 2. Issues IdentifiedlPresented by Orange County Schools a. Need far a new middle school Superintendent Randy Bridges said that both of their middle schools were over capacity. There are mobile units at both of the middle schools. He feels that growth will come to northern Orange County. He said that they were driven in northern Orange County by the availability of water and sewer. He said that he would like to see the middle school in Efland but there are questions about water and sewer. There will be water and sewer at Pathways but some additional property would need to be acquired. b. Funding for the schoollsite c. Other topics (time permitting) Regarding impact fees, Randy Bridges said that they were waiting on the process that Planning Director Craig Benedict was going through on a study of impact fees, and as soon as that is finished the Orange County School Board will be coming forward with a request. John Link said that the intent was to have this item go to public hearing on November 27th Keith Cook said that the school board was anxious to move the process of the impact fee study along. Randy Bridges said that they talked about shared facilities at the new high school and they are still open to discussing that possibility. 3. Issues IdentifiedlPresented by Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools a. Immediate need for funding far 9 Elementary School Nick Didow said that there were design and location issues for Elementary School #9. He said that, from the start of this project, they have indicated an upgrade of the multi-purpose room to the equivalent of a gym for community use. They would like to have that considered by the appropriate bodies from the beginning of the project for Elementary School #9. b. Purchase of future school sites and availability of funds for such purposes Nick Didow said that this pertains to their discussion to aggressively pursue school sites far 10-15 years out. The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School Board report identifies several potential sites and the board has not pursued purchase or submitted a request to the County Commissioners, but they are inclined to do that. Commissioner Gordon said that the Schools and Land Use Council did receive a report on potential sites. had same additional concerns with the concept/pre-planning phase and would rather have three phases. Superintendent Neil Pedersen said that his board did not see the need for having the concept/pre-planning phase because of the timing and logistics. He said that it would be difficult to talk about design before a site was selected. Donna Dean said that under the design/construction approval, the practice has been that as each phase starts, the school boards ask for the County Commissioners to approve the project each time. What the school boards would like is for the County Commissioners to approve the total projects by components and let the funds be used for components as necessary. This may mean that one component will cost less and another will cost more. Commissioner Brown asked what the reason would be for rearranging the casts and categories of a project. Neil Pedersen said that after the design and bid, there are usually adjustments to be made. Most of the radical changes have to do with the site and construction. Other types of change orders may come about by a mistake in design and the design needs to be adjusted. This usually entails taking money from contingency to pay for the extra costs involved with a redesign. The third concern is ensuring that the entire Board of Commissioners is aware of the potential sites from the beginning. Page four (at the top) of the agenda abstract addresses this concern. There will be a Commissioner representative that works with the school board and shares the information at a regularly scheduled Board of County Commissioners meeting. The next concern was building design standards. Chapel Hill had a problem with the detailed cost comparison analysis in that it would add to the cost of a project and may not be available until the architect has proceeded far into the project. Neil said that sometimes it did not make sense to have a prototype. Since Scroggs Elementary Schaal was built, Chapel Hill- Carrboro School Board is pleased with the building and the costs. However, they know that they cannot build this same design on the Meadowmont Site. They will need a special design because of the site involved at Meadowmont. There is both a time and money issue when considering whether a prototype is suitable. John Link said that whether it was a detailed analysis or looking at a chart and asking questions about the costs, the process of a detailed cost comparison analysis needed to occur. Neil said that in the budget that was laid out for Elementary School #9, the school board feels that they are adhering to the standards they followed when building Scroggs Elementary. He asked that the County Commissioners go back to the standards and let the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School Board know which standards they are not following. John Link feels that we should go back and question some of the standards that were discussed five years ago. Commissioner Halkiotis said that the idea of a prototype was nothing new. Person, Caswell, and other counties are using the same kind of architectural design considering there is a flat piece of land which the same architectural drawing could be used. He is not convinced you have to do a unique design analysis. That needs to be figured out ahead of time if we are going to have the money to build the necessary facilities in the next 20-30 years. With the budget so tight, we will need to save money wherever we can. Randy Bridges said that for Pathways Elementary, the developer had built the same school in several places across the state and it happened to work for this site. Susan Halkiotis said that if it would be a benefit far the County Commissioners to see a prototype, Superintendent Bridges would be glad to show them around the Pathways site. Chair Carey said that he thinks that the question that needs to be asked is why one Schaal in one district costs "X" and in another district costs "Y". He feels this item will continue to be discussed by all involved on how we approach this type of project. There is no need to do a cast analysis once the bids have been received. We want to have the best quality schools for the lowest cost possible. Commissioner Jacobs feels it would be good for all three boards to tour Pathways Elementary and Smith Middle School. He said that this was another reason to have the site half are used as classrooms and half as support activities. It was confirmed by Neil that the 105% capacity was not counting the use of mobile classrooms. John Link said that even though mobile classrooms are not counted as permanent space, we still need to count them and use them. Commissioner Jacobs would like some information on how many mobile classrooms are used. Orange County Schools: Superintendent Randy Bridges said that there would be a pre-K class at Pathways. Orange County Schools is also looking to reduce class sizes in grades 3, 6, and 9. They have a continued need to provide Spanish in the Elementary Schools and they have been able to provide that at Grady Brown Elementary School. Commissioner Gordon asked about the actual and the target class sizes far grades 3, 6, and 9. K-5 classes are allowed 21.5 students per class and grades 6-12 are allowed 25 students per class. The target class sizes are 18 students for grade 3 and 20 students for grades 6 and 9. Chair Carey asked why school nurses were not in the list of priorities. Keith Cook said that providing school nurses was still a high priority. They try to add one nurse each year. Elizabeth Carter said that the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School System uses their school nurses to let them know how things are changing and the needs of the students as the population changes. They have ahalf-time nurse at each of their Elementary schools and middle schools and a full-time nurse at each of their high schools. Susan Halkiotis said that, as the County Commissioners know, the Orange County Schools have taken a step back this year. They look to the County Commissioners for some resolution to the issue of nurses in the schools. Commissioner Gordan asked about the Chapel Hill-Carrbara Schools class sizes and targets and Neil Pedersen said he would provide their opening school report to the County Commissioners. He said that the class sizes were 22 students in K-2 and 24.5 students in grades 3-5. The sizes for grades 6-9 fluctuate from school to school. The class size is 23 students for grade 9 and 26 students for grades 10-12. In terms of targets, there is a report that is a couple of years old and the emphasis was more on Elementary and Middle Schools. Commissioner Brown asked about the number of assistants in the classrooms. Neil Pedersen said that they have full-time assistants in grades K-3 and one assistant for every two classrooms in grades 4-5. In the middle schools, there is one assistant per 100 students. There are no assistants in the high schools. Randy Bridges said that Orange County Schools have full-time assistants in grades K- 3, one assistant for grade 4, and one assistant for grade 5. Chair Carey asked how the school nurses were funded. Neil Pedersen said that one nurse was provided through the County and the others were funded through state and local Schaal funding. Randy Bridges said that Orange County Schools lost the County-funded nurse. Commissioner Jacobs suggested that the Orange County school Board meet with the County Board of Health to talk about school nurses. Commissioner Halkiotis said that the frontline of defense for healthy children in America was in the schools. He said that the State of North Carolina made a deliberate decision about 12- 14years ago to give school nurses to the schools through the Boards of Education, not through the Health Department. He said that if the Health Department wants to do it, then they should fund the nurses for bath school systems and put a nurse in every school and stop the debate. The bottom line is that this has not happened and both of the school systems have used local dollars to provide nurses for the schools. c. Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance Development Commissioner Brawn made reference to the Memorandum of Agreement on pages 11 and 12 and suggested that everywhere it says, "designate a lead jurisdiction in designing common Commissioner Jacobs asked questions about Elementary School #9. He feels it would be helpful to have a document that analyzes Paul Thames' analysis from 1997 about the suitability of the site. There are still some questions about Meadowmont and how to specifically address the difference in cost between Scroggs Elementary and Elementary School #9. He would like some more information and analysis of Elementary School #9 at minimum. This information will be provided. c. Long Range Facilities Plan Nick Didow made reference to the Long Range Facilities Plan document and said that this was an attempt of his board to look ten years forward at what would be required of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School system. The document does recommend an Elementary School #9, relocating their administrative offices, planning for 500 more high school students, planning for Elementary School #10, and acquiring school sites. He has begun to calculate the amount of the investment this involves and it would be 40-60 million dollars of capital projects over the next ten years. The school board has begun to work through action and making decisions about each of the projects identified in the Long Range Facilities Plan. The first and most immediate need is Elementary School #9. The County Commissioners and the County Manager has received a formal request for moving forward with Elementary School #9. This request is documented in the memorandum dated August 28, 2000. Nick Didow said that their school board needed some guidance from the County Commissioners. The money they need over the next ten years will far exceed what can be allocated from the County budget. He said that if a bond could be put before the voters in 2001, it could possibly be enough to take care of the needs for the next 8-10 years. He said that the school board needed some advice on the following issues: Assuming a bond would be part of these projects, how soon would the County Commissioners be willing to put a bond before the people? Could the bond be brought before the voters in the spring of 2001 or the fall of 2001? Prior to that, what is the timeline for the school board getting a list of projects to the County Commissioners? Chair Carey said the Board of County Commissioners had not had the opportunity to discuss the proposal for the 9t" Elementary School. He said that there was na possibility of taking a bond issue to the boards with all of the outstanding issues that needed to be addressed in the spring of 2001. He said that the earliest date for the band would be November 2001, depending or the other issues facing the Board at this time. John Link made reference to the orange sheet, Bond Referendum Timetable (Preliminary), and said that there was a limit on how much debt the Board could get approval far at any given time. He said that the Board needs to pursue capital projects for the next 4 or 5 years. Commissioner Halkiotis suggested having a couple of work sessions on considering a bond issue. There are a lot of issues to consider including space for judicial buildings, etc. He said that the Board needed to set a priority order and figure things out. Nick Didow said that he would like for the bus tour of school buildings to include the Lincoln Center. Chair Carey pointed out that merely sharing all of the plans and proposals far the school systems does not mean that the County was making a commitment to fund it all. 4. Adjournment A motion was made by Commissioner Halkiotis, seconded by Commissioner Jacobs to adjourn the meeting at 10:15 p.m. The next meeting on the approved meeting calendar will be held on Monday, October 2, 2000 at 7:30 p.m. at the Southern Human Services Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Moses Carey, Jr., Chair Beverly A. Blythe, CMC