Wow! I have been derelict
in my responsibility to write blog posts.
I have never gone a month without writing a post until now. I will try to do better in the upcoming
months. One of the reasons that I have
not blogged as much is because my schedule has started to get more hectic. This is a result of the natural “rhythm” of
this time of year as the District starts to plan for the upcoming year and
budget discussions are underway.
However, I do want to discuss one task that has started to carve out a
lot of my time lately…the high school building project. The School Board made a decision last Fall to
make needed repairs and renovations to the high school. This project can be viewed through three
different lenses: financial, educational, and maintenance.
Maintenance
The
decision to start a building project at the high school was made because the
high school is the largest (and most used) building in the school
district. On almost every night during
the school year there are school and community groups using the building for an
activity. In effect, the high school
building is the “showcase” building for the school district because there is so
much community traffic going through it.
The high school went through a renovation project 20 years ago and that
project dealt with items that needed to be addressed at the time. During that time, the “behind the wall”
infrastructure was fine and did not need to be addressed. However,
now we find ourselves in a situation where we must address these issues
if we want the building to stay functional.
The piping, electrical, and HVAC are all reaching the end of their
useful lives (they have been in use for 40 years). The School Board’s number one concern is to take care of the infrastructure needs of
the building so that the building can continue to service the community safely
for another 40 years. Although the
public may not see these repairs, the building will function much more efficiently
because these repairs are undertaken. A
large portion of the budget for the renovation will include these repairs.
Education
This
project also comes at a time when education is undergoing a significant
change. The challenge for the school
district is to create a learning space that will be flexible enough to accommodate
new learning trends. The future of
education will require educational spaces that encourage collaboration between
students and students and students and faculty.
In addition, the high school of the future will start to take on a look
of a college campus with students coming and going more frequently as their
schedules become more flexible. We also
must be cognizant of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)
initiatives and encourage our students in these areas with state of the art
STEM facilities within our high school.
Financial
The
school district will be paying off its debt service (from the last building
project 20 years ago) in 2015.
Presently, the school district has about 10 mils set aside to pay the
bonds from the last building project. As
the old debt “comes off” the books, the School Board has decided to “rollover” some
of that into a new debt structure to pay for a project. The Board has already sold $10,000,000.00 in bonds
to start putting money aside for the project. This was done at this level
because interest rates are actually better for the school district when you can
sell bonds in increments of $10,000,000 or less (it seems counter-intuitive, but
that is the way it works). The Construction Manager for the district will share
with the Board the estimated cost of the project in the coming months. The Board will then sell bonds to finance the
rest of the project. Currently, the interest
rates are at historic lows in the bond market which is nice moving forward. Additionally, the school district has
structured the bond payment on the new debt to start when the old debt is paid
off.
I will keep you updated on events surrounding the building
project as they arise.
