I want to support BEX IV, but...
I want to support BEX IV. I know that the District desperately needs to build additional capacity to meet the demands of increased enrollment. I would be a lot more comfortable supporting the levy if I could just get a few questions answered.
- The BEX IV plan includes about $80 million to put NOVA back into the Mann Building and to put a middle school back into Meany. That's $80 million to put things back to the way they were three years ago. I would really like to hear someone acknowledge the mistake of moving these schools in the first place, and I would really like to hear some "lessons learned" that will give me confidence that the District will not made these kind of $100 million mistakes again.
- Similarly, let's hear an admission of error and "lessons learned" regarding the closure and re-opening of elementary schools in West Seattle.
- The Board will vote to close the books on the Garfield renovation this week. This project was originally budgeted for $54 million but ended up costing three or four times that amount. Again, I like to hear that acknowledged and I would like to hear some "lessons learned" that will give me confidence that we won't see that kind of cost overrun again.
- The BEX IV plan includes a number of program placements. The plan, for example, clearly says that The NOVA Project will relocated into the Mann Building. That's interesting to me. How and when was that decision made? I ask because NOVA will no longer fit into the Mann Building, the property can't take the proposed addition, and NOVA doesn't want to move back to the Mann Building. Is this the new Program Placement process?
- The BEX IV plan includes the placement of north-end elementary APP at the new Wilson Elementary School. It has to go there because that's the only place for it. Why are construction decisions dictating program placement decisions instead of program placement decisions dictating construction decisions?
- Speaking of the Mann Building, the Board will vote this week to commit $1 million of BEX IV money to the cost of that renovation and addition. The commitment of these funds before the cash is in hand, before BEX IV has even been approved by voters, is a HUGE violation of the financial protocols adopted after the Moss-Adams audit. Why is the District breaking their own rules about spending money they don't yet have? More to the point, why should I believe that the District will respect the "lessons learned" described above when they are disrespecting the "lessons learned" from a previous financial fiasco?
- Will the renovated Mann Building be designed and built to meet the unique needs of NOVA? If so, will the building be versatile enough to house other programs in the future if the District's needs change? How program specific will the construction be? Will it meet the District's ed specs?
- Someone else is sure to ask this, so let's get it out there. The District did, at one time, have twice as many students. Why could they house and educate all those students then but they can't do it with the same buildings today?
- The District's projections say that they will need 70 more elementary school seats in the McClure service area in the next ten years. They have plans to add 200 seats to Queen Anne Elementary. That will meet the expected demand with room to spare. So why do they also plan to build a 500-seat elementary school downtown when there is no projected demand for those seats? It looks politically driven. The most recent explanation is that the District doesn't think their enrollment projections are right. Why are they reporting incorrect numbers? What other incorrect enrollment projection numbers are they reporting?
- If the ed specs for elementary schools has been increased from 500 seats to 650, then why hasn't the capacity of the proposed downtown elementary school been increased to 650? Have the planned additions been changed to increase capacity to 650?
- BEX IV plans call for a demolition and rebuild of the Meany building. Will all of the capital improvements made in that building over the past three years get torn down? We just got done paying for seismic retrofitting and a new roof on that building. Why are we demolishing brand new work? This reminds us of the District voting to build Denny on top of Sealth's brand new softball field and tennis courts. What are the "lessons learned" here?
- How can the District have any lessons learned with the high frequency of staff turnover? What efforts are being made to establish and maintain some sort of institutional memory?
What questions do you think the District needs to answer about BEX IV?
Comments
Mary
Also, my impression is special ed students and ESL students got little accommodation and probably just sat in a big general ed classroom not getting much out of it.
And of course the District has given up some buildings too. Queen Anne High, Lincoln, many smaller schools.
I won't vote for the $1 Billion+ school levies. It's too expensive. Not with all the other proposed levies/bonds out there, not to mention once again tax dollars used to front another new stadium. I'm not seeing good returns for the tax I've paid or for government that practice good governance where ALL its citizens benefit. Nope, I'm seeing serious malfunction of corporate welfare, hugh public build cost overruns, lawsuit payouts, and DOJ's intervention.
-we can do better
We CAN negotiate.
If discussions of BEX IV are prefaced with the following:
"The Seattle Public Schools (SPS) 2012 Facilities Master Plan will serve as the platform for project selection. The Board has developed policies and guidelines that direct capital planning staff to prioritize potential projects:
• Health and safety (seismic mitigation)
• Capacity
• Building Condition
And the 2012 Facilities Master Plan (still marked "draft") makes no mention of a South Lake Union School or a Downtown School, but does say "The Capital Planning Staff has used the Board priorities along with a data-driven approach to project selection."
Then, show me the data that proves a downtown school is a necessity, not a nicety for workers to drop their children off for math in Mandarin.
- Not learning from our mistakes.
Mr White
Mr White
tough love
Charlie asks all the right questions.
Director Carr said it best when she said this BEX needs a narrative that voters can believe in. Schools First "it's for the kids" will NOT work and if they go that route, look for it to lose.
Ditto on lessons learned except when they discuss Garfield at the Oversight Ctm mtgs, it's a lot of "tsk tsk, perfect storm of building escalation, etc". I have never heard anyone say anything was done wrong.
I have noted to the Board that they are committing money to projects based on BEX passing. I know they need to plan ahead but they could be putting the cart before the horse.
As well, the point of fixing things under BTA only to tear them down under BEX has got to stop.
The last BEX presentation showed them going OVER capacity needs in several places. That would be totally wrong to do because we cannot then have TOO much space. Voters would never trust the district again.
Mr White
Adding capacity to a constrained system is challenging and SPS is most certainly a constrained system. For starters, now that we are in a geographic assignment system, capacity can only be added in locations that are at a minimum geo-approximate to student addresses.
So once you start with the premise that additional capacity at Rainier Beach has no impact on assignments at Ballard (unless you move the boundaries to the point where Franklin is within RB boundaries and Garflied is within Franklin boundaries, etc), then you are constrained by available property, and ability to construct for adding capacity.
In other words, if you don't have enough elementary capacity in the north end, you need to first evaluate what property CAN add capacity and then you need to evaluate what capacity can be added at a reasonable cost.
So you do start with the students, but only in a general geographic sense and then work on the construction and after settling on suitable locations and cost, being the hideously painful process of re-drawing boundaries and moving programs.
In theory, you could start with the entire field of possibilities and look at every commercially available property to see if any of them can become a school but that is hard work, expensive and not likely to produce results. After all, there are not a lot of multiple acre sites just hanging out on the market and even if there were there are certainly not a lot of multiple acres sites readily available that would be simple and easy to get permitted to become a new school.
Was the capacity data run against the latest enrollment projections?
Do these "new" projections really exist, if so, have they been released?
Has the data been analysed school by school, or just by region?
Were things like special ed space, before/after school care, preschools, PCP space, etc... taken into consideration in their calculations?
If the answer to all these questions is "no," then why waste the Board's time by including them in the presentation?
North End Mom
Was the capacity data run against the latest enrollment projections?
Do these "new" projections really exist, if so, have they been released?
Has the data been analysed school by school, or just by region?
Were things like special ed space, before/after school care, preschools, PCP space, etc... taken into consideration in their calculations?
If the answer to all these questions is "no," then why waste the Board's time by including them in the presentation?
North End Mom
Ben
"Renovations of historic buildings are expensive, and thanks to labor shortages and skyrocketing costs for materials, Garfield's $78 million cost has now ballooned to more than $100 million."
Now mind you, we are way past 100 million now, and a gap between 78 and 100 is a big gap -- but I had always thought that the real number, the credible one that was devised at the point when they were actually bidding the project and starting work -- was in the high 70s, not the mid 50s.
Using the smaller number always feels like sort of a "cheap shot" to try to make things look "even worse" (when they are plenty bad enough!) Because at the height of the bubble, there WERE labor shortages, and big construction cost increases -- so whatever school had gone out for bid at that time (versus an earlier school) would have taken that hit. The only way to have avoided it would have been to refuse to do the school at all, or completely start over in terms of the scope of work. And I concede == maybe that is what we should have done -- I think we will never know.
But once they had a "real number" of $78 million at the start of work, it seems to me that that is the number that is relevant for purposes of cost overruns, not an earlier plugged projection on a BEX wishlist.
I am not trying to defend the overruns. I just want a "defensible number" to shoot at -- and to me, the spread between $54 million dollars and 120 million dollars, during a huge real estate/finance bubble, seems not defensible.
If I bought property in 2000 and figured an estimate of $300 thousand to build a house on it, then went away, and came back in 2005, fired up the project and got a bunch of bids in the $450 thousand dollar range, due to inflation in labor and costs of materials in the intervening years -- I might wish I had built back in 2000, but I wouldn't consider myself $150,000 "over budget" on the first day out.
Am I missing something (other than the hugely negative effect of other projects further down the list that were negatively impacted -- which is a true, and bad, loss, but doesn't change which number is the right starting one.
I think Garfield should be a case study for the district on building, over-building and allowing too many cooks in the kitchen.
Nope. I'm not voting for the next levy. tough love from this family also.
Two and a quarter years to go