HomeMy WebLinkAboutAgenda - October 18 2023 School Capital Needs Workgroup Agenda-with minutes ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
CHAPEL HILL-CARRBORO BOARD OF EDUCATION
ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION
Capital Needs Work Group
October 18, 2023
Meeting— 8:30-10am
The Capital Needs Work Group is conducting a Virtual Meeting on October 18, 2023. Members
of the Group will participate in the meeting remotely.
Panelists: Kelly Guadalupe, Kirk Vaughn, Bonnie Hauser, Greg Wilder, Steven Arndt, Jean
Hamilton, David Sturtz, Perdita Holtz, Dwayne Foster, Travis Myren, Alan Dorman, Quamesha
Whitted-Miller, Al Ciarochi, Patrick Florence, Jessica Goodell, Dr. Jim Merrill, Rob Olsen,
Jonathan Scott, Catherine Mau, Cy Stober, Riza Jenkins, Rhonda Rath, Andre Stewart, Gary
Donaldson
1. Welcome—Commissioner Jean Hamilton, Chair of Work Group
2. Woolpert Inc. Update: Long-Range Optimization Plan, Options &
Recommendations
David(Woolpert)presented live-attend analysis: majority of schools for OC
School District are in the center, Efland Cheeks is further to the west. We
do have housing growth in the western area which may require an additional
school in the near term. Recommendation is to find locations near to the
growth to build school near population center.
There are some mismatches in utilization. OCSD is attempting to address
with a boundary analysis now, and we're recommending some rebuilds to
fewer schools in a handful of cases
Perdita: suggest to use a different term than homeschool for publishing.
Jessica(Woolpert): we'll use "base school" instead.
Orange County: The 10 year FCI is when we get in to poor condition
Some undersized classrooms particularly at the elementary schools. This is
due to them being older schools.
CHCCS: again 10 year FCI is getting in to the poor condition range. We
want to ensure you don't get in to a position where you're needing to do a
lot of renovations all at once.
Some undersized classrooms at elementary and middle schools
Higher condition needs schools are also smaller than your newer schools.
When the small bubbles get in worse condition, the return on investment
decreases, so we wouldn't necessarily recommend fixing them up, and
instead would recommend new investments in new schools. As the FCIs
increase and the adequacy score decreases, the better long term investment
is new construction to set you up for lower operational and capital costs in
the long term.
David: options: With options A&B, the underlying assumption is to keep
what we have and fix it up. Option A is the minimum investment: there are
5 levels of priority in the condition assessment, 10 years of life cycle.Option
A invests in levels 1-3. Option B also focuses on fixing what we have.
Addresses levels 1-3 and life cycles years 1-10. Option B maximizes
investment in facility condition, but doesn't do anything on adequacy of
environment. Focuses on nuts and bolts.
Options C&D look at addressing priority needs, and then putting funds in
to renovating and replacing schools in the long term. That does address
adequacy.
Option C in practice takes what we identified as top priority near term
renovations & replacements.
Option D is the big picture,what we think ought to be done overall. Then it
becomes a matter of timing
Option C is the first effort on the big picture (option D)
Steve: Can you explain what a replacement school is?
Answer: Rebuilding an existing structure, in the majority of cases this is
rebuilding on an existing school site. The strategy we recommend is to build
on the existing green space of the school, so you lose fields for a couple
years, then once school is built, you knock down the existing structure and
regain the fields and parking spaces.
The idea is that we'll have very little cost for swing space for kids because
you'd be building on the existing green space for the schools
Rob (Woolpert): You'll notice in options A and B your investment doesn't
really touch the kids and doesn't impact the teaching, learning process. In
options C&D parents will be able to see how what we're doing is impacting
children day to day. Ability to impact learning
Jean: So for option D, the $67 million per year, does this also include the
maintenance &upgrade of schools?
David: 2% in industry terms is total capital outlay, maintenance, upgrades,
etc. with logic that buildings are on no more than a 50 year life cycle. The
$67 million focuses on current maintenance needs and replacements and
recycling. It doesn't include minor operations and management costs that
could come up each year. It safely captures the vast majority of condition
needs. Minor operations and management are not included in the $67
million for option D. It does capture most of it.
Jean: The infographic is really clear and nice, thank you
Bonnie: Gravely is a relatively new building, it's surprising to see a 50
million renovation on it. Is there anything you can tell us about that?
Answer: It has a present needs of just under 18 million, 10 year needs going
up to 30 million. Roofing and electrical are the two big things. For planning
purposes when we budget a major renovation, we consider 2/3 to 3/4
replacement value is the cost of the renovation. What we can do moving
forward, we can get in to project specific budgeting and dial in for specific
schools to look at project specific approach,rather than the model approach
we're doing now. Line item budgeting comes later.
Rob: Also on gravely,we recognized there that less than half the spaces are
right sized, so some of that renovation is about right sizing classroom sizes.
Consolidate means combining two schools in to a new bigger building. The
choice programs are programmatic decisions. Replacing 2 elementary
schools close to each other doesn't make sense, better to combine: Central
and Hillsborough.
In Chapel Hill, Frank Porter Graham you have a surplus of capacity, we're
comfortable with you reducing elementary portfolio in Chapel Hill to
increase operational efficiencies
Catherine: could you mention housing on the Hillsborough central site?
Answer: when you consolidate, the obvious question is what to do with the
remaining site. There has been a desire to create more affordable housing in
that area, so that could be an option for the County to consider viable next
uses for sites after consolidation. This was an idea Steve had.
Steve: To be clear I was just brainstorming
Answer: Right, it's one of those things we'd need to do more of a deep dive
on.
Jean: You're saying eliminate Frank Porter Graham?
Answer: Yes, you'd redistrict. Or look at a potential k-8 in a rebuild.
Perhaps at Estes Hills. Or a shared physical site. But given capacity and
enrollment trends, we're comfortable reducing elementary portfolio by one
school
Jean: I'd like to check in on that enrollment data
Answer: When you replace these schools, you're replacing them at a
modern size, which is larger than current. So that helps with increasing
capacity
Bonnie: We're proposing a new school in Mebane that's in addition to
Efland Cheeks?
Answer: Yes, that's the only new school we recommend
Bonnie: On the enrollment question, I always get the shivers when we talk
about SAPFO because we're talking about eliminating it, because it tends
to overestimate the available capacity, and then there's pre-k to consider as
well. It would be helpful to understand what the overall enrollment capacity
is, and what it would be when we're done with these renovations.
Answer: We've done some looking at historic SAPFO capacities relative to
what we identify with DPI study. We can get in to that. I can say that the
only configuration you need to have discussion about is elementary level.
SAPFO and our analysis are the same at middle and high school levels.Less
than 10%swing difference at elementary level.As you replace schools with
modern capacity I'm not worried about your capacity at all.
Bonnie: It'd be nice to see the totals on a net basis of capacity overall before
and after.
Answer: We can show you that
Jessica: Project Timeline: We have sent over the state of schools report.
That's the final deliverable for the condition assessment/adequacy. We've
sent it for review, we'll finalize it about the 1st of November.
David: When you started this project you asked us to investigate how other
counties fund multiple school districts. Without having a comprehensive
assessment and plan, the way you've set things up is second to none in the
state, for ADA, etc. The capital needs group and reviewing CIP requests is
good. However, not having a comprehensive plan and assessment was a
weak point we identified, and now you've remedied that. So moving
forward,we recommend the plan you approve becomes the basis for project
prioritization and funding.
Jean: Thank you for this presentation and for the work. It is what I was
hoping this group would do. Get a sense of needs and understand the
options. Of course we still need to take it out on the road and have a
systematic way of how we'll fund it. Thank you for this important step in
the process.
Bonnie:Ditto that.The report is breathtaking.We've been talking about this
for many years, in terms of desperate needs of our schools. It's beautiful
and aggrieving as well since we've been waiting for it a long time. Will
there be a time for individual school boards to get this presentation for their
schools?Because I think school boards need to do this.
Also, let's assume we find the funding,there's the question of how to get it
done. Guilford County hired 2 program managers and 13 contractors to
move their plans forward, could you talk about that process?
Answer: We can work with Steve and team to determine how to get
presentation to boards.
How to fund this thing, how to implement is the second question. We've
started conversations with Finance team at County on separating out priority
repairs funding and capital/renovation and replacement funding. Ideally you
have pay as you go funding for your ongoing repairs and maintenance. Save
indebtedness for major projects you can't spend out of annual funds.
Finance will help identify what those might be and what the tax implications
would be.
From a project management standpoint: If we look at$1 billion over 15 year
horizon. It's a lot of projects, but it's less projects than Guilford has.
Guilford is 3x your size and the timeline was shorter.You probably do want
some assistance to manage this, not the same level Guilford needed, but
some. There's different ways to do it. You don't necessarily have to
outsource everything. You can use this as an opportunity to get outside help
and staff up internally. Having internal capacity to maintain the work would
be recommended. A good practice I've seen clients do is to hire a handful
of people who are dedicated to seeing this through and supporting it while
working with external resources.
3. Discussion and Group Next Steps
Jean: We should meet in November, if David and Jessica could join that'd
be great. A shorter time for lingering questions to be covered.
I want to talk about the ORED data: How we're projecting in the future is
important, understanding models and assumptions there.
Discussion of the bond:The timing is such that we need to get on it.Because
of the number of steps
It'll be important to have the school boards look at this. We'll also be
thinking about how, when the commissioners see it on Dec 4th, that folks
understand it enough that they feel comfortable enough moving forward
with it.
4. Next Meeting is November 15th, 2023.
Adjourn
Capital Needs Work Group virtual meetings are open to the public to attend remotely. Should
any member of the public wish to view this meeting, please click the following link to register:
Capital Needs Workgroup Registration Link
After registering, you will receive a follow-up email which will allow you to access and view the
meeting. If you have any comments or questions, would like to submit any written comments to
the group, or would like an emailed copy of the entire agenda package for this meeting, please
email Kelly Guadalupe at kguadalupegoran ec�oun . nc._ov before 3:00 pm on October 17th,
2023