 And welcome to the facility subcommittee meeting of the Arlington School Committee. Today is Thursday, March 19th, 2015, at 4.30 p.m. And in the room is Cindy Starks, Dr. Krissy Allison Ampey, and Dr. Kathleen Bodie, our superintendent. First order of business is public participation. Seeing none, seeing none, we'll move to approve of the minutes from January 22nd, motion from Krissy, second by Cindy. Any discussion? No. All in favor? Aye. The minutes are approved. Great. First thing on the agenda is an update on the hearty playground work. All right. Well, we do have estimates, which was much higher than we thought it would be. The estimate is $60,000. And what does that replace? It's only fixing some of the pairs. So we are looking at one where the money could come from, which is problematic. It's really a capital expense and something we need to be working with capital on over the next few years. We're looking at whether it can be phased, which is complicated because it's parts of different structures. Another possibility is to take down a couple of structures if they really are unsafe and think about replacing them completely down the road. So right now, that's what the cost is. And we don't have a plan for exactly what's going to happen other than the fact we're going to do something at some scale. So we budgeted $60,000. That's substantially over $60,000? What did we budget? We thought this was going to come in around under 20. Under 20, and their proposal is $60,000. The problem is it's proprietary. You can't go out and get bids from different people to fix the equipment because they've designed it so that there is a unique wrench or a unique piece that only the company that made the equipment can give you. And I think this is something we need to think about in the future is that we do not buy playground equipment that has this proprietary quality to it. So we can't get more than one bid because nobody else can repair it. Nobody else can repair it. It comes right from the company. So they replace it. Completely replace the structure. Right. Which they're expensive. Take it out. Or fix it. And see, so we are going to do something. And it's just that this is the point where we finally got the quotes. Not too long ago. I can't tell you the date, but so we're in the planning. I talked to Diane Johnson, who is our CFO, as you know. And she was unable to attend tonight because she's been so ill. All right. Thank you. So that's where we are with party. I think that probably in the next few weeks, I'll be able to give you a better update as to what the plan will be for this summer. Because we have to make the plans now in order to get the company in. How does it work with bidding if there's only one person? I mean, only one company that can do it. No, do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. Because we have to bid for everything. Right. It's called sole source. Okay. So there's no, you don't get in trouble with the lobby because you can't get multiple bid. Because there's no way to get multiple bids. Right. That's right. So our goal was to try to get the playground already repaired by the spring. Well, I'm not saying that's not, there's not going to be some repairs. I just can't tell you tonight exactly what the repairs will be. $60,000 is a lot of money. Given all of the competing needs that we have or facility updates and facility maintenance. Okay. All right. So that's it. So we'll just find out in the next few weeks where things stand and what you can repair. And you may have to close down part of it. Is that, that's a possibility? That's a possibility. That's not what we want to do. Yeah. I think the real focus of our, of our CFO is to see if we can find the money. Yeah. Right. Okay. I'll see if there's something that we can. Okay. Got it. That's what I wanted to hear. And can we get an update maybe at the full school committee when, if it comes in or because we can't say facilities because facilities will be different. Right. If you have any information by next week, we'll let you know. If not, it'll be maybe the next meeting. Okay. Got it. Okay. Thank you. So the next item on the agenda is an update in the MSBA statement of interest for our Lincoln High School. All right. We put the statement of interest out to members of the committee and we have some suggestions that we're incorporating. I would say that the two things that we are focusing on are the enrollment changes. And then the second is we are updating some of the security issues of the high school as well. But the plan is, is that you will get a copy of the updated SOI on Monday through Novus. And we need to have a vote next Thursday. Approval of the SOI. Okay. I've asked the town manager if he would schedule a vote of board of selection on the 30th. And if they can't do it on the 30th, it'd be the following week. We have to submit it through their portal by April 10th. And there's no, they don't time, obviously they don't want it submitted, but it doesn't affect the consideration of the SOI. Anything submitted before April 10th is considered on time and in the same pool of projects. Okay. Can I bring up something? So I'm still playing catch up. So I realize this should have come in earlier when it's actually Lynn's idea, but I think it's a good one. He pointed out that Saugus, which was accepted in the Saugus High School, which was accepted in the 2014 MSBA's middles for the next step, had updated their proposal between 2013 and 2014 to use priority one. And a lot of the things that they list are things that we also see at Arlington in terms of doors, aging steam pipes, there's a whole range of things. And I just wonder if it would be worth maybe having Mark Piano look at it and just seeing can we, could we, you know, because that's the only thing that we could do to even more strengthen our application is to go to priority one, which is the one for safety. And I realize there's more paperwork and stuff that's involved with this, but it looks, I think it's worth asking the question and seeing, we already have a lot of the information in there would just be kind of tweaking it. Well, we certainly can look at, I can tell you that Diane did call it MSBA, and actually more than one occasion, and to talk about this, to see if we would qualify that category, and they would say no. Now, what, perhaps what Saugus did, and I can't even speak to it because... We should go see. Right. We should go see that preschool. I would love to go see what it looks like. What do they think? Is there anything in there that is like worse than what we see? From what you can... You could have to do it, but we were taking MSBA at their level of their advice that when we described, when they actually had the SOI, did it rise to the level they would consider that priority. And, you know, they're looking at this as being a much more dire situation where there's, you know, severe building issues. I'm bringing it up because when I skim through this, it doesn't look that different than... Let me take a look at it. It's on their website. Yeah, it's on the MSBA website. It's, you know, read through what they've got for priority one. It doesn't look greatly different from what we know of with the high level. And yes, I understand MSBA may be seeing something different, but I'm saying this is a actual accepted proposal. So, and it was updated to change from 2013 to 2014. And I'm just, again, looking for anything we can do to strengthen our application within the range of what they dictate. Right. It's... It seems like... We're meeting tomorrow on this so I can... You can talk about it. It seems like it would be good to look into it. And even if we're on the line, it doesn't hurt us to make the error. They may disagree with us, but maybe... It doesn't hurt us to make the error. Yeah, and if they say anything, say we looked at... We were looking at other applications. And this one was accepted last year and has, you know, the descriptions are very similar to what we see in our high school. We don't understand why this is a problem that we did. Great. Thanks for doing the research. Thank you. You're welcome. Good work. Anything that we should... No, I mean, Salem, there were several schools that listed category one that were similar. Salem also listed category one that had a very lame list of items. They weren't accepted. So, I mean, I think... They weren't accepted. They were not accepted. They weren't accepted, but their list was, you know, extremely lame, like, you know, the windows wouldn't open very much or things like that. So, you know, give in the asbestos and the, you know... We have similar issues. Waste in the basement and all those things. It sounds a lot more like sagas, which was accepted. Yeah. Middle girl also listed it, but they had a lot of water issues. So, I didn't feel it was a very good model for us. You know, it's just... We don't have that kind of stuff. We don't have that damage. Well, I can only tell you what MSBA told us. Yeah. I know. I'm sure. Take a look at it. I think it's always looking at it. It's definitely worth looking at it. And say, does this sound like the right thing? Right. So, it's... You know, that's the one thing that would strengthen us even more. Right. I guess... Especially if others are calling themselves level one and not. Yeah. Really being there. Right. Well, if... Or maybe this is... I mean, if they took it, I think they're saying, yes, this is level one. This is the level one, right? Even no matter what they're saying, when we call the talk to them, if they took it, they're by definition saying this is acceptable and level one. Yeah. So... All right. Yep. All right. I think when you call them about something like this, they have to caution you to say it's unlikely. Anyway, that's a standard view. I imagine that's a pretty straightforward response. Right. But anyway, let's look at it. It's definitely worth looking into. Absolutely. Okay. Great. Okay. Any other questions about the MSBA application statement of interest? Okay. The next item in the agenda number five is a report on the effort to secure a consultant to do long-term planning and any preliminary space plans for the district for FY16. A lot of progress. As you know, we put out a request for bids back in January, and we received three bids, and very extensive, very expensive. Extensive and expensive. Yes. Yes. You know, I thought we had written a very tight, clear, and had multiple eyes on it. And it was, I think. But I do think that what happens is when architects look at these, they take a phrase and they expand on it. Right. And so we had designs of 21st century classrooms and that type of thing, which isn't really what we were looking at. So we went back to the bidders, talked with them in terms of, really, this is the framework of what we're looking for, which is basically a space analysis. As we look at our enrollment growth, what do we see in terms of adequacy? And where do we see, particularly schools that are going to be particularly hard pressed for space in the years ahead, suggestions of how we might address that options and that respect. And we also wanted to have another enrollment study done. We have ours. We have nest decks. But it would be good to have a third one, which would be part of this, because they're going to be thinking about their recommendations. And looking at all of the different information. We certainly are going to supply them with census data, live birth data, and all of the, any information. We're trying to minimize the amount of research that they would have to do. We'll give them as much as they need. So we went back to them. Their new bids were due about a week ago. And we've been reviewing them. And I think we're pretty clear on where we're going to go. But since we haven't talked to the architect, I don't really want to announce it tonight. Right. So that was within the realm of reality now? Yes. And very clear. And much, it has a very much focus on exactly what we want in this study. And so the timeline is to begin working with them probably this month. And we'd like to have a report in August now. Maybe since we're slightly off our original timeline, we might just slide that into September or October. But basically it's a fairly limited time frame. Are we, and this is from our budget, the school department budget. Yes. And there's money in our budget this year. And next year for you. So I'm going to be paid this year. It would pay, well, we probably would pay it over two fiscal years. Yes. And then are we going to work on anything that they recommend? Obviously not for this coming school year. Because we won't even get the results till September. So we're expecting that whatever they, so are they making recommendations for things or are they just helping us to decide like how many kids? What are space needs are going to be? How many extra classrooms do you think you're going to need? Where are you going to need them? What are the options for getting them? Okay. That. All right. It seems to me that it just coincides with the SOI that we're submitting the MSBA. So the information from this could be useful that says that we need so much space. And also it seems to me that it informs long-term planning for the district that should begin once the study is done. Next year is discussion. The FY16 discussion by the school committee is probably going to have to be about, okay, this is what the dad is saying. Right. This is our long-term challenge. You're in what are we going to do about it? I mean, there's a lot of options that could be out there. Have we had a discussion with the GIS person in the town about trying to do some sort of helping with the projections because we have the data. We know roughly the ages of people who live from different houses and roughly when people move out and who moves in and it seems like that could be back-fit, modeled and then projected forward. We have. Let me share that data with you. What he's done is looked at a number of people that are 65 and older in different parts of town with the idea that they may be at some point selling their house and what would happen and then change over. So we have that kind of data that we're looking at now. Data that we'll also give to the architect with this and actually Adam Koroski who is the person is very open and to helping us with any kind of data that we need that's going to help the study. It seems like we could maybe start getting a little bit tighter projections. Well, I would like to sit down with the architect and really go through all the kind of documents that they would need and they already have some of that in the proposal that we're going to go over. So we need to set up a meeting and do all that. So once we do that, then we'll see what kinds of reports that would be helpful that would come from his office. So by the September school committee meeting we'll have a sense of what this report tells us and then so then... So we're not going to do anything about it though next year? No. It'll be for the following year. No. So will you have next year? No, but I think in the goals, the district goals that are finalized... One of the district goals are finalized once. To move forward on getting... No, when you do the goals, you do the goals for next year. Something should be in the goals about to take the information from this report and begin to do X, I don't know, formulate a long term plan for the district because we're going to have the data and we don't want to stop the momentum. We have to have that. Yeah. And I was just at Thompson today looking at the situation there in terms of classrooms. When the school was built, we designed it for three classrooms, except for kindergarten and four classrooms, at that grade level. So it was 19 classrooms. And next year we could be pressing at 19 if we have four kindergarten again. And our preliminary numbers are starting to... We're at three, but this is only March in our preliminary numbers based on registrations. That school cannot sustain four classrooms at each grade level. Just can't. And so we'll see. So we have two grades right now with four classrooms, and neither one of those can be collapsed into three without having class sizes to make. No way the situation with the bracket and the downer on the spectrum of kids. So the problem has not been resolved. And we have to... So I think we're going to get the study. We're going to get it in the fall. Part of the FY16 goals for the district should be to take the information from this report and then begin to formulate a long-term plan. Yes. A long-term space plan. And do your best you can on projections. One of the areas of town which has the highest number of people over 65 is in East Arlington. Now if in the next 10 years that changes and we change over two people with children, what does this mean? Right. And it's... But even with this, there's still going to be a level of uncertainty because just things you can't entirely predict what will happen in the next few years. Right. It would be interesting though if we could look at our enrollments by school area. We are. That's exactly what we're going to do. Because I mean I know that we've... I mean obviously we see the growth, the overall growth of the district, but when we can get it down to elementary school areas, that's going to be even more interesting. And not only that, not only just the 65s, but where are the apartment buildings? Because I know in Lexington one of the hugest growth areas is apartment buildings. Well in Lexington what they found in their enrollment study is that over 10 years period there was virtually no change in the number of students who came from single-family homes with all growth in apartment buildings. I don't think that's what you're going to find in Arlington. No. We need to know that. No, we're going to see both, but I think that we are also, we too quickly discount the apartments as being a place where children end up and they do. So, you know, just also... And, you know, ownership doesn't necessarily mean that the owner lives there if it's a multi-family. It could be a rental property. So a 65-year-old who owns a rental property is really happy. They're not selling it and they're not moving, but people can come and go in there that are have kids and we don't know that either. So it gives us some information but it doesn't necessarily give us a clear picture. So anyway, we're moving forward. That's important in developing as kind of understanding where we are and what the plan is going to be. No. All right. Number six is Planning for the Stratton. Planning for the Stratton. Well, this was good news for the Stratton. Well, one is close to note the Capital Committee has recommended the funding of the project as had been developed last year. I mean, it's a design. It's clearly only in a very rough stage. It's a little bit more than $10 million for the actual construction. So they have approved that going forward to town meeting and last Thursday they approved the relocation costs. Oh, excellent. So the modulars and busing. Exactly. So we know that we're going to have to have modulars for relocation. So what will happen, I think at town meeting is they're going to merge the two into one amount. What's the relocation costs? They approved to me the other day. And how many modulars is that? Well, that's all remains to be seen as we move forward with this. Depends on what kind of modulars. Well, you have to take it out a bit. Right. You know, you have a rough idea, but until you actually put it out the bid in the locations you're going to have and you also put in things that you need to have in the module and also the site. Right. How easy it is to connect to the building how easy it is to set up utilities. There's a lot of factors that go into this. So you know I put it out in an email to Stratton parents our CFO Diane Johnson and our superintendent facilities, Mark Miano went to every school and looked at whatever would be available space if we were to even what would be any available space for classroom size and could anything that's been used currently for sort of something else could that something else be moved into a smaller space and what would be the available classrooms. And we thought we needed to do at that level of at the school level to see where we were and what we found is just what we thought there are hardly any extra classrooms that are available. It doesn't mean that there's not a couple but in part of the relocation those classrooms will be used. So the question was how many modules would we have to have. And then another development that happened last week as you all know the now the multiple plan or ELL potentially put us in a position of having to have additional classrooms. And so there's been a number of things that have even happened since then that has evolved our thinking in terms of how we're going to plan for this. So I think we're getting much closer to knowing how many modules we absolutely need and where the sites are going to be. And then we'll see what the bids tell us and we may have to modify our plans based on price or you don't know. Well that is a possibility. So the process on this is that we have our idea where we want and what the specifications would be and so forth. But until time meeting approves the money we bid on this. And we need to go out to bid right away. Well that's even complicated too because really until time meeting adjourns the monies voted are not available. Right. Steve, that money is actually in 17. It was presented at Fincom on Monday. The relocation money is only in 17. Only the project manager is in 16. Yeah, the only project manager can come out and have done a bid for owner project manager and they have bids in. I think they're actually very close to a selection of who, that's really what the company will be the manager. Then once they get the owner project manager then we will go out for a designer. So I think it's important to sort of get the time frame so we're clear on the time frame because the time frame that I understand is very close. We have 2015-16 school year is a planning year design year. In 2016-17 school year would be the work on Stratton building and the moving of students to other locations. Yes, it will be one year out of the building and we're looking at it as a 14 month project. It starts in June. The day the school closes will be some staging stuff that goes on that would affect learning in the classrooms but it will start exactly and it will be a very tight time frame. Got it. When you say that the relocation money is in FY17 are you saying that town meeting won't be able to vote on it? So we approved the capital plan but the appropriations are only approved one year at a time. So it's a multi-year capital plan that's included but things change. I mean that's a five year plan. Right. Things change. The actual appropriation is approved. Dr. Buddy was saying that it has to be approved. Well, what's going to happen is once we know the town meeting approves it then the bid plans that probably didn't start before that but get the bid plans ready so they can go out for bid because what we have learned in this process you need to actually order your classrooms at least a year in advance of when they're installed. So we would be probably looking at installation in August the latest in August 16 so we can have everything ready to start a school. So we have to select and order sometime mid-summer but that it still can work because usually you put the bids out for a few weeks and then it takes a couple weeks to evaluate them and make the award. I'll check with Charlie to make sure. I mean I think we have to do that. We have to have the bids out of here. We have to have the more arm of Buddy here. Right. I'm not sure Charlie knows that but I'll check. I think he does. I think Diane told him that but from what I understand I think everybody the person who handles all the bids at town hall and town manager everybody understands what we need to do and we'll do it in a timely way. So the bid that we're going to put out there we're going to make sure we get some options to rent and some options to own. Is that the possibility for the modules? But you don't know yet. I don't know if you ever own them. I think there's always a lease on them but I'm not 100% sure on that. Yes. So this could be an option to short-term one-year lease on some and then the possibility of long-term lease on others. That's a possibility. And you'll see what the price is. How many classrooms do we need for struggling? Not how many they have. 21. So we have to move all 21 or we think we can save some room in some schools. So we don't need 21. That's what we wanted to find out. That's good, yeah, exactly. But a week ago we were thinking, well wait a minute, maybe we do need 21. But anyway, I think all of that is developing has been it's nothing ever stands on its own. It's always interconnected to other decisions and other issues you're facing. And that's exactly what the situation is in this case. But I think that we have things that have been planned a number I think we're going to be able to not have to use some identified classrooms. I think we have another way of dealing with some of the ELL situations. It doesn't mean we're not going to need more staff. The issue was do we need more staff and do we need more classrooms? Well, you know, I mean, modular classrooms actually can be pretty good places for learning. The classrooms work very well in lots of places. Oh, they could be great. The modular classrooms today are great. In fact, I think they're air conditioned. Yes, they're air conditioned. That's a good thing. That's key. Yes. They will be. All right, any more questions on the Stratton? Anything that you need to add? It was approved, I think, on Monday as well. I think everybody wants this to happen. I think it's all gone the right process as we've gone through this and I'm totally confident that we're going to get this done in the timeframe we want to get it done. Okay, any new business? David, the next. I have a couple things. Yes. I have to do with fields. Oh, yeah. Did you see that in the globe? There was snow blowing the turf somewhere. Yeah. All the sports are going to be delayed. We're practicing parking lots. Can't get rid of them. Our AED was on top of this one. She really was. She was very forward thinking on this. So we actually found a company that has the right equipment to clear snow off of turf. Cool. You can't use snow blowers. And you really shouldn't shovel a gear because you can damage it. So we found a person and part of the cost of it was offset by the rentals that we could have lost had we not done it too. So there was that part of it. They were finished and they actually finished faster than we had than the time frame that we had paid for. So they actually went down to the field. The tennis courts have cleared those as well. Oh, awesome. Our tennis courts are clear. The field is clear. Now what's not clear are the baseball fields. What's the condition of the turf after the snowstorm? We had to replace it last year or so. It seems to be okay. We're replacing it this summer. We're replacing it this summer. And so we're going to be going out for bid on a designer for the turf. Is it a designer? Yeah, there's a lot. Yes. I thought it was big rolls. Well, it will be big rolls. And one thing we've learned about it is that it's like carpeting. You can later if you need it to roll it back up. In fact, you can now roll it up to the fields that can be resold. Oh my gosh. I know. Is this under our budget of capital? Capital. We have $500,000. And the turf last how long? About 10 years. But that was the concern. We're going to be going through a building project here at the high school. How would the turf be affected by that? Notice I'm talking very positive. We're going through a project. That was one of the factors that we've learned in the process. Do we have to have trucks on the turf when we do it? No. No. We can roll it up, sell it, hold on to it, and then when we put it back in, we put it back in. So that'll start too right at the end of the seasons this year? It's going in July. But we have to get the, again. We have to have Tommy improve before we can officially go out for bid on this. I think we can do the designer piece right now. The designer, it's not way of designing it. I would like a certain color. It's not really like that. It's really, they're sort of managing it. Managing the project. Well, you have to have a plan if we can stuff that. Somebody to manage it. Some good news as a result of the preventive action we took town-wide to clear roofs of snow over February vacation we had hired about 70 people. Some of the 70 were already employees, but we hired additional people to clear roofs. And so far, there's been a couple of leaks, but this week we have not seen, and when we did the melting last week, we did not see any big leaks in the schools anyway. And no collapses. No cracks that we were aware of. So that was good. One of the things that, another positive is that we're doing fault diagnostics at Pierce, which is looking at certain things that might fail. So it's a software system you put in to actually look at all your systems in the building. And the advantage of this obviously for Pierce, but we have found certain problems in a particular filter or nut bolt or whatever. And we're able then to go to the other schools that have the same systems and be preventative before they have a problem. So we don't have the software in all the other schools that we have at Pierce so we can use that to expand on. Those are the systems in HVAC? All those systems you're talking about? All the HVAC, everything in a school is on a computer. It's a much more complicated system. And in fact, one of the things that the town really doesn't have is somebody that has that expertise. And that's something that I think in this new facilities department, they may reconsider this. So we always have to go out on a contracted basis. We use Johnson Controls for our main group to have anybody come in if there's any kind of problem because it's all computer based. But at any rate, this diagnostic system is giving us a chance to be ahead of problems that may happen in other schools. Yeah, it's good. And I think that in general with this new facilities department that's going to be, maintenance department is going to be developed for the town starting next year, I think that this is going to give us a much better ability to do preventive maintenance because it's going to be a lot more organized. With the joint maintenance department, school department at the time? The implementation of the school dude, creating spreadsheets in terms of maintenance schedules that just don't exist in the same way they should. That's not that they don't exist, but you need something that's much more comprehensive than what currently exists. We've invested a lot in buildings in this town and we need to maintain them. That's it. Let's sit down there and talk about the facilities issues. Any other new business, your questions for Dr. Boley? Okay. Take a motion to join the meeting. So moved. I'm a favor to see aye. Thank you very much. Thank you. No next meeting.