02/19/2019

School Board votes to include facilities-needs assessment in 2019-20 budget proposal

The School Board on Feb. 12, 2019 voted to include $189,060 for a facilities-needs assessment in their 2019-20 budget proposal.

The vote came after a presentation from Colby Co. Engineering outlining the scope of the assessment, which was recommended by a citizen Facilities Needs Assessment Committee that met this fall to determine the need for a formal assessment.

The scope of the assessment includes:

• Field investigations of existing buildings and utilities to determine their current status ($56,718);
• A series of meetings with a project team and a separate building committee, stakeholder interviews and public presentations ($37,812); and,
• A needs-assessment report based on the field investigations and meetings, categorizing recommended projects as critical, intermediate and low priority ($95,530).

The report will not define costs, but "it will give the town and School Board is a very comprehensive list of recommended projects," said Seth Wilschutz, lead designer with Scott Simonds Architects. The list would be prioritized starting with code requirements, then by input derived from meetings and interviews included in the proposal:

• Four meetings with the project team, consisting of the superintendent, town manager, School Board, Town Council, Finance Department and/or Facilities Department representatives, for regular project updates;
• Five meetings with a larger building committee, similar in size to the Facilities Needs Assessment Committee and representing the superintendent's office, Town Hall, School Board, Town Council, students, staff and the public, to gather more input and help establishing priorities;
• Four public presentations, likely at a meeting or workshop of the School Board, Town Council or both, to share information with the community and gather more input;
• Five stakeholder interviews with students, staff and teachers from each of Cape Elizabeth's three schools to gauge current facility challenges, desired improvements and ask "What would your ideal classroom look like?" All responses would be documented and summarized into publicly accessible minutes, said James Hebert, project manager with Colby Company.

The "backbone" of the needs-assessment report will be the data sheets completed for each project area after the field investigations, said Hebert. "This is the point where we look above every ceiling tile, we go in to every single classroom and ... every corner of each school," he said. Each data sheet will categorize the project as critical, intermediate or low priority, and include a scope-of-work section with technical information that could be incorporated into requests-for-proposals or requests-for-qualifications.

If approved as part of the budget, the meetings and field investigations will likely spread out over the summer, Hebert said. After that time the board could choose which projects to pursue. "(You) probably will not to be able to take all of them," Wilschutz said.

In 2017, Colby Company and Scott Simonds Architects were selected from among five responses to an RFQ to provide a feasibility study for possible school renovations. Funding for that study, however, was not included in the 2018-19 school budget due to cost and a wish for greater community participation.

The proposal the School Board will be budgeting for fiscal 2020 does not include the design work that was part of the 2018-19 proposal. Colby Company still has some data that was collected last year, which can be incorporated into the fiscal 2020 report, Hebert said.

The School Board is still developing its 2019-20 budget proposal and will next meet in workshop session at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 26 in the High School library.