Yesterday, the school board had a special board meeting to review the latest design development plans from our bonding proposal that was approved in April 2018. You can find those plans presented to us here.
I'm going to be real with you. This has been a long, tedious, and at times frustrating process. In good faith, the board has kept a few things at the forefront of our minds since the district has trusted us with a major bonding initiative. 1) We cannot and will not go over budget as we have in past projects. 2) We will build what we've discussed with the community. 3) The second grade wing, and hopefully the entire project, will be complete by Fall 2020. Throughout the several months, we've seen cost estimates come in higher than initially thought. As a board, we have settled on what would be in our budget: the 8-classroom second grade wing, a full size gymnasium, and ensuring that a storm shelter is a part of the project. We had to put aside plans for possible two classroom wing additions to the kindergarten and first grade wings. The last thing we had to decide was how to move forward with drawings for a locker room. We decided to go ahead and have these architectural drawings completed and bid as an alternate. In the plans presented, the total cost is within our scope of $7.2 million. Most of our conversation last night was around the location of the storm shelter. Since, due to to project cost control, we have had to move the locker rooms from a "sure thing" to a "bid alternate"---this means that our hands were basically tied, meaning the storm shelter needs to be located in the 2nd grade wing. What does this mean? It means we're spending significantly more on FEMA-rated doors and windows for classrooms. It means those doors will be heavier than normal doors. We discussed the possibility of redrawing and recalculating budget numbers to put the locker room back in-play to be the wisest stewards of tax dollars and do whats best for kids. In the end, two things caused me to vote to move forward with the plan presented to us---putting the storm shelter in the 2nd grade hallway. First, it was doubtful to me that even with saving cost related to FEMA-related windows/doors, that we would be able to afford the size of the locker room in order to house 800+ people. Second, to keep us on our time schedule, if we were to instruct the architects and construction managers at-risk to redraw and re-estimate---we were going to lose 2+ months of time. The solution we reached isn't the perfect, but it accomplishes our goals of #1: keeping our kids safe in a storm situation and #2 keeps us within budget. It will be an adjustment and learning experience to have heavier doors on these classrooms for second graders. It's a hard pill to swallow, knowing the cost of those doors and windows. However, to keep the storm shelter and not guarantee the additional construction costs--our options were limited. We did cut the total project cost down another $125,000, to approximately $7,050,000, from what was recommended to us to ensure we stay within our allotted budget. We have contingencies built into the budget that are significant and important. What's next? The architects will continue to draw final bidding documents and finalize these in the next few weeks. The expectation is that the project will be out for bids in the first half of May, ending the first week or so of June. Our hope is for a mid-July groundbreaking time frame. This was a tough meeting and I left emotionally exhausted. Balancing facility needs, what's best for kids, ensuring we're true to how the project was sold to voters, and ensuring we stay within budget has proven to be a large and difficult task. That said, we're moving forward! Until next time, Craig
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AuthorHallsville resident. Foster Parent. School board member. Politico. Jesus Follower. Cardinals Fan #MizzouMade Archives
June 2020
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