Oak Park School District 97 Meeting/ 11-19-13

District 97 Board members in attendance: Graham Brisben, Amy Felton, Jim Gates, Jim O’Connor, Bob Spatz, Peter Traczyk, Denise Sacks

The meeting was called to order at 7:04 pm.

There was an update on bond sales for $3 million for the purpose of increasing the Working Cash Fund and providing for the levy on further referendum bond projects.  Therese O’Neill and a representative from the William Blair Group shared the information.  The district has an AA2 bond rating (State pension and finance issues hinder moving our rating up to an AA1 rating).

Special Reports

Update on Capital Improvements – Representatives from STR Partners gave multiple reports on district capital improvements.  First discussed were air conditioning options for the eight elementary schools. Self contained units, window windows, ductwork, rooftop units and their costs were some systems investigated.  The four final options and their costs range from $15 million to $27 million.  Can the work be piecemealed? (yes) Building by building or section by section? (Yes, but may increase cost) What is the longevity of these options? (15 years?) Are there “green” grants available to help defray the costs? (maybe, up to about $250,000)

An accessibility study followed on the goal of having all schools being accessible.  Julian Brooks and Holmes were deemed accessible.  Some of the other schools need some work to have accessible exits in certain areas of the building (Beye, $36,000 and Irving, $48,000) and to make Lincoln auditorium and stage accessible ($500,000). Also, eventually most of the doorways will have to be replaced to make entire buildings accessible.  The Board will have to discuss what and how it wants to proceed.

The District-wide capacity study of facilities was done to see if the district is ready to deal with the current and projected enrollments.  All schools seem prepared for enrollment projections (Longfellow is currently at a high number already), but there may have to be a future discussion on school boundaries or a “build” solution for enrollment increases.

The final report was on the District Administration Building.   Work options ranged from $1.7 to $2.8 million to update HVAC, in addition to bringing the paths of egress up to be fire rated.

The difficult discussion will be whether to approve work on a building that does not function properly for staff, does not accommodate staff properly, and is perceived by users as an unpleasant environment.  The District building has been appraised for $1.2 million, with the land appraised for $1 million. The Board will continue this discussion on what to do with the Administration Building in the future.

Board members Brisbane and Sacks along with Finance Director Therese O’Neill put together a framework for future capital expenditures.  A packet of slide information was passed out to the audience.  Hopefully this framework will allow the District to anticipate and plan for major capital expenditures and to reduce surprises around capital spending requirements.  This should help facilitate the big picture of capital requirements vs. current and forecasted resources.  A scoring rubric was developed for capital projects over $100,000.  This is not meant to be cumbersome to staff, but to be objective to help compare priorities for each project.  Therese O’Neill and Norm Lane, Bldg and Grounds Director, scored a project sheet to help the audience and the Board understand the process.  This will be an interesting process.   This is a first review of this process and fine -tuning will be needed.  Capital expenditures under $100,000 will somehow have to be categorized, maybe using a similar process but as a fund, not a single project.

The Board then had a general discussion on how to proceed with some of these big projects, i.e. capacity, accessibility, and air conditioning.  If any construction is to be done in the summer of 2014, the bidding process would need to be started in December.  The capacity issue seemed to be a highest priority among the Board members (capacity affects every student).  The district administrative team will meet to discuss the capacity needs of the schools, especially Longfellow since it is over capacity right now.  The cost of increasing capacity could be expensive (building more room) or more economical (school boundary issues).  The Board decided to drop two of the more expensive air conditioning options with more discussion about where to find the dollars for air conditioning all the schools. It agreed to do the accessibility work at Beye and Irving because of safety issues.

This discussion finally finished at 10:10 pm.  The agenda had many more items to cover, but I had to leave. 

The December Board meetings are scheduled for December 3 and 17 with a special joint meeting with the Village scheduled for December 14.