total time: 24.27 minutes
total words: 1707
total time: 6.99 minutes
total words: 609
total time: 8.2 minutes
total words: 890
total time: 3.47 minutes
total words: 296
[Jenny Graham]: to get in from the waiting room. Please be advised that on November 20th, 2025 at 4 p.m. there'll be a strategic and capital planning meeting held through remote participation via Zoom. This meeting is being recorded. The meeting can be viewed live on Medford Public Schools YouTube channel through Medford Community Media on your local cable channel, which is Comcast 9, 8 or 22 and Verizon 43, 45 or 47. Since the meeting is held remotely, participants can log in or call in by using the following Zoom link. The meeting ID is 940-935-87447. Questions and comments can be submitted during the meeting by emailing Jenny Graham at medford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting must include the following information, the first and last name, your Medford street address, and your question or comment. Okay, I'll call the roll. Uh, member so. Remember, I felt present number Graham presence. So, 3 present 0 absent. Um, okay. So our agenda for today is just to, um. Get ready, uh, to present our capital plan for the upcoming year through our established budget process for capital planning. Um, and we're roughly targeting the 2nd meeting in December, which is December 15th. Although if everything, like, ties up in a bow, and we want to do it at the next meeting, we can talk about that based on what else is on the agenda. And by way of a little bit of background for anybody listening, um, for the last couple of years, we have, um, tried to kick off capital planning in this, like, no October, November timeframe so that we can collect all of the input, um, and have a cohesive conversation about priorities, bring that forward to the school committee for like agreement and adoption and turn it over to the city. Um, council and the mayor's office, um, by early next year, so that when they are looking at capital projects, and as pre cash gets certified, which tends to happen in the spring here in Medford. Um, that they know sort of what is hot on a list of things to do. Um, and then we can be talking about, like, sort of what's on the critical path, et cetera. Um, so this year, uh. with Ken joining us in August, although it feels like a year from August at this point, Ken. He and I met and we talked a little bit about some additional inputs that we have this year that we haven't had before because of the Facility Conditions Assessment Index that was created and completed over the summer where That assessment had somewhere north of 60 or $70 million of capital projects outlined in the next five years anyway. Um, which is a daunting and staggering number, but Ken has done a lot of due diligence to kick us off. So my thought for today is we'll have Ken pull up the spread the capital planning spreadsheet and walk us through what he's done to sort of integrate. That facilities condition assessment, because he, he fell into the rabbit hole of the spreadsheet and it's pretty intense now. So I want him to explain that. And then we can talk a little bit about the things that are on the top level of the plan and in the near term. And I do see Teresa has joined us to talk a little bit potentially about CPC oriented projects. So thanks for being here, Teresa. So, Ken, I will turn it over to you if you want to walk us all through this. The spreadsheet and sort of how where all of the facility condition assessment stuff is and how it is all floating up before I do that, though, I will mention to this group. that a couple of weeks ago now, we were notified by the MSBA that the three statements of interest that we put in for roofs and HVAC at Mississauga, Roberts, and Brooks were all approved. So we went to the board meeting. Those three projects are all approved. So obviously, that's a huge component of that $60 or $70 million, obviously. There's some work that has to happen between now and February that we're sort of working on behind the scenes to to get going, but the priority, like, the order of. Projects there will be Roberts miss a tuck and then Brooks based on the, particularly the aging of the roof and the. HVAC systems. So more to come on that. Obviously, those are like on the plan, but those are a little bit different because they're already sort of actively in this MSBA funding pipeline. So all good news, honestly. I'm so excited that we were able to get all three of those into the pipeline and not have to wait two more years to even think about talking about some of those things. So that's great. Ken, I'll turn it over to you if you want to walk us through your spreadsheet.
[Kenneth Lord]: You should be able to see the spreadsheet now on your screen. Yep. Okay. So what I did was I took the facilities condition assessment report, which is a voluminous document. And I received the Excel versions of this, and I imported it into different tabs. So this is the totals page, which shows all the items from the FCA. And then there are tabs for each school, which has all of their items on that sheet. I then went through and I kind of categorized everything for each school in a budget location. Moving them to ARP, which stands for Accelerated Repair Program. That's only for the Brooks, the Roberts, and the Missituk. Doors and windows, electrical fencing, so on and so forth. I also marked a number of them as operating, which are things I felt we might be able to accomplish through our Extraordinary Repairs account or through regular maintenance work. So I categorized everything as best I could for those. Off to the right, you'll see operating tabs for each school. That just pulled all the things that I categorized as operating into one tab so you could review those specifically if you wanted to. I do have did a lot of work on the capital plan document tab, but really what I did after our meeting this week is I made a prioritized list of everything from the capital plan Pulled those pieces of data to this one tab So basically the suggestion I have is of course the ARP projects are the most important these are You see two numbers here. This is for the feasibility study and then the project itself and these are the Medford portions of the amounts and I do have a separate spreadsheet that talks about all the numbers and everything and the square footage and whatnot, and the total project cost that is estimated for the heat pump and roof conversion. projects as well as some ADA work that might fall into there. There is a lot of discussion about what the budget number is for that. The MSBA quotes $150 a square foot, which is what I'm basing this on. I did reach out to Habib, who did the Facilities Connection Assessment Report, and they're getting some information from one of their estimators to see if the $150 really holds true or not. So these numbers here that I have for the Schematic design and the project for the ARP may come down some. Beyond that, I pulled out a number of things from the facilities condition assessment report, as well as from feedback from principals, the fire alarms, are listed in the facilities condition assessment report for the five buildings as being aged out, need to be replaced. To do a project like a fire alarm, we really need to have a study done. You need schematic plans done. You need code review. It's not something we could write a specification up for ourselves. I reached out to Habib and asked them to give an estimate for what he thought those might cost. And surprisingly high, He suggested $225,000 for design for all five of those. So I just split them out for each one. We would probably have to split these out over multiple years to do the projects because these are the price tag of the projects. They're all north of $400,000 with the McGlynn being almost double that. So they are big projects to do. Those firearm systems are particularly at the Brooks, the Mississippi and the Roberts at end of life and you're getting hard to find replacement parts for them. So that's what's in the capital. This column here, I'm not sure if this is titled correctly, this would be the ARP money, the Accelerator Repair Program money. You'll notice that the Brooks only has the schematic design portion because the schematic design would happen pretty far into FY26, so the project would probably be a further year out than this. I did include phase two of the network refresh. This would be our portion. This is a rough estimate right now because we're going through some plans reviews with just from phase one, which is the high school and then the which needs some extra equipment and for the rest of the schools. This would be our portion as this would be an E-rate project. So E-rate reimburses us 60% of the project. We only cover 40, which is a wonderful thing. Um, I do have intercom upgrades for the Andrews and McGlynn. These are also at end of life and parts are not available. We have had some significant issues with Andrews. Um, these are a public safety issue. We do have, um, uh, this is how they announce everything, uh, for, you know, from, you know, fire drills, everything else they talk about on these intercoms. Um, these quotes here are from a vendor. These are rough budget numbers. These will need some refinement if we move these project forward with more design and specification. But that's a pretty good number there. The playground renovation. We discussed the need to do a feasibility schematic design for the three playgrounds, having a firm. look at what options we have for different playgrounds, what designs, all that stuff. The TABB provided this estimate here, which seems a lot of money to me. So we may need some more refinement there. This would cover all three designs and give you complete documents to be able to bid those out. One of the first principal items Nick Tucci has 10 cafeteria tables that are in need of a replacement. He has 32 total tables. This would cover 10 of the replacement that he says are immediate. They do probably need to be scheduled out in future years to replace the rest of them. And we should look at some of the other schools. But Nick has 10 that he has trouble with right now. The next priority I listed was paving. There's quite a bit of paving money listed in the feasibility study. But in order to put this out to bid, we need designs, surveying, all kinds of stuff. So we do need to pay an architect to do all of that work. Habib, again, just supplied a rough estimate of what that might cost for those. Again, we may decide to split these up of multiple years, because this is an awful lot of work to be done. This is parking lots, driveways, sidewalks, curbs, stuff like that. A lot of work there. A small item at the McGlynn, the condenser for the fridge and freezer walk-ins units needs to be replaced. It's original to the building, still uses R22 gas, which you can't even get anymore. That should need to be done. I don't know if we have room to include that into the current McGlynn Andrews HVAC project. We did have them quote it out and because coding it out through them, through the project, everything else. It's many times more than that to do it through them. We can do it much more efficiently out of the project with a separate contractor. The next section is doors and windows. These are rusted door frames, doors we need replaced, glass bloom, screens, all kinds of stuff like that. These are directly out of the facilities condition assessment report. Unlike the fire alarm and the paving, this is a spec we could write ourselves. It's not a complicated specification to write. And we could put that up. I see Paul has his hand raised. Yes.
[Jenny Graham]: Hi, Paul.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hi.
[Jenny Graham]: Everybody had a bar across their face, so I didn't see anything.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm assuming, and it's probably impossible to quantify, but those doors and windows, to me, is going to be savings on heating and cooling. Or are they, in fact, not? in a state where we can expect anything like that?
[Kenneth Lord]: I don't think, believe you would see a substantial or even detectable change. Okay. Most of the windows these issues are, is there some part of the seal has failed between the multiple panes, and so they're fogged and glassed in there. Is that going to impact some part of the insulation property of the glass? I'm sure, but I don't know that it was something you'd perceive as a change.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Kenneth Lord]: Thank you. The rusted door frames, things like that, those are becoming mechanical issues.
[Jenny Graham]: Windows that are in need of the resealing, what happens if we don't do that?
[Kenneth Lord]: Right now, the glass has become clouded. You can't see through it. Then eventually, it will become an issue where the gas will fail more and more and it become more and more of an insulation factor of an issue. The windows are not broken, there's screens missing, there's other things like that. But it's not about danger. It's about being able to use a window and see through it. That's what the main reason there. So we looked at the Andrews, and if I just filtered out doors and windows, these are the kind of things they're talking about.
[Paul Ruseau]: I am always surprised how much a screen actually costs. I have anyone at home, and I'm like, I don't need one that bad.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I live in an old school. I see this a lot.
[Kenneth Lord]: So that's kind of what does. And some of these estimates, all of their estimates, they're applying a factor to square footage. So these prices may come down a little bit when we get specific to actual replacements and things like that. But this is how they estimated things. um railings to the karen theater at the high school uh we have not i thought we had we have not received the quote for this yet so this is a guesstimate at this point any number in gray is is a gray number essentially um we're gonna have a real great number for that but this is what i'm estimating at this point uh this would add railings along the left and right going up the staircases for uh patrons to be able to hold on to something as they walk up We do have some damaged seating at the McGlynn. This would replace a section of seating with new seating and allow us to use those as parts to continue to repair what's broken and to continue to repair as we go down the road. Nick has requested a flooring and rug replacement at the auditorium and library. This is a rough number from this. I pulled from another school. This needs some more work as far as getting a better number for this, but it's pretty far down the list. And then we have the intercom. upgrades at the other three schools. I ranked the Andrews and the McGlynn much higher because they're two years older. So they're in an out year now, but I left them down here. If there was things we traded, moved around, they might enter into the capital report. So that's kind of the high level list that we have. We can certainly go through this sheet here, which has the prior year, things in progress, items that were funded and other put in other areas. Some finished projects that were in here. These were the new items section, which I drove the categories for. And then down the bottom is the accelerated repair program totals for each school and categories they fall in. I should have mentioned earlier, the facilities condition assessment report categorizes things in three categories. Priority one is immediate. They're saying we should do now. Priority two is in the two to five years. Priority three is five years or beyond, which I didn't total out here. and the bulk of it is in the ARP.
[Jenny Graham]: Back to the FY27 prioritized list. I just, I had a couple of questions. I'm sure everybody does. One of my questions is about number three, the phase two of the network refresh.
[Kenneth Lord]: Oh, this, yep.
[Jenny Graham]: So this, the 350 is what, remains in order to complete the project. What's that?
[Kenneth Lord]: Our portion.
[Jenny Graham]: That's our portion. And was that already allocated to us?
[Kenneth Lord]: That I don't know. I'm not aware of that. I know that the project was originally like $1.5 million total, and it was too much for E-rate in one year. And Dr. Cushing had split it into two phases. and we've been allocated money in this fiscal year, and we have a little last fiscal year we can use, but I do not know if anything is in a future year, if this money is already allocated out as part of free cash or not, I really do not know. I don't know if Noel knows, he's on.
[Jenny Graham]: The allocation was a one-time allocation, but I think I would have to go back to my notes to- Sure. to know, so this is our portion.
[Kenneth Lord]: A phase two that's, yeah.
[Jenny Graham]: And the rest would be paid for by E-rate?
[Kenneth Lord]: Correct.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay.
[Kenneth Lord]: That's 40% of the cost of phase two.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay. I don't feel like, maybe we didn't talk about phase two, because I don't remember a number that big, but.
[Kenneth Lord]: So it was one number before, and then late in June, it was split into two phases. Initially it was proposed as one big phase.
[Paul Ruseau]: I do remember this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay.
[Kenneth Lord]: But I don't know how that impacted any allocation of money though.
[Paul Ruseau]: That I don't know either.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay. And my other question was about the playground renovation feasibility piece. If you could talk a little bit more about that. I know Teresa's on the call as well.
[Kenneth Lord]: Sure. Um, so, um, we have three more playgrounds to renovate. The Brooks, the Roberts, the Mississippi. need to do kind of a design and feasibility study of what we want to do and how we want to do it and that sort of thing and whether or not, you know, there's alternate locations perhaps with some nearby areas that we could do some other playground work. This was the number that Habib just threw out there as a potential cost for that type of a study. Seems high to me. I have not had a chance. He just gave it to me today. I didn't have a chance to have a conversation with him about it.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay. I think our McGlynn study was $50,000, but it was just, it was a design study. It was not a feasibility study. So it was different.
[Kenneth Lord]: And maybe that's what we need is just a feasibility study and maybe it's 50 per and it's 150. This was just a number he put out there just over email quick, you know, trying to get some quick and dirty numbers from when we discussed it this week.
[Jenny Graham]: And I wanted to thank Teresa for joining us as well. I don't know, Teresa, this came up and we were talking about whether the CPC would fund such a feasibility study across the three remaining schools. And just to get a better understanding of any thoughts that you have that we might want to consider as we think about. potentially putting together a CPC application for this.
[Theresa Dupont]: Certainly. Thank you for having me, Teresa Dupont. I'm the Community Preservation Act Manager for the city, so I help support the program and the committee that funds these programs, these types of projects. So I also agree that the 350 number is a bit high, especially if this would be all under one contract rather than we do one school, one year, you know, next school, blah, blah, blah. So I feel like that number is probably closer to about 200,000, just based off of past projects and, you know, acceleration and costs that we're seeing across the board. In terms of timing, please forgive me I am I understanding this correctly. Is this for fiscal 27 outlook or things we're trying to accomplish this year. And I asked for grant deadline reasonings on our annual funding round has already passed for fiscal 26 funding. Yeah, this would be for your next funding round. Okay, perfect. I just wanted to clarify that because I didn't want to get any hopes dashed if this was something that we were looking to do quickly. But yes, this would be a welcome application for fiscal 27.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay, and I think, you know, 1 of the things 1 of the reasons why we've been talking about this potentially as a feasibility study. The last year, when we did our capital plan, we identified that there are in fact, 3 playground renovations still to go and we identified that the Roberts is our priority, but it is objectively the most complicated project that we'll see because it is the tightest on space and. At the time, last year, the conversation was around, like, we should not be just trying to, like, make a new playground until we address the fundamental space issues at the Roberts in some more, like, fundamental, sustainable way. So at Brooks and Missituk, the situation is a little bit different. There is space, and how the space is used certainly could be could benefit from modernization, and the equipment is quite old. So all of that is true. But at the Roberts, in addition to all of that being true, they're very space constrained. And that is something that we're going to have to grapple with, which would be part of the feasibility study here. Like, what else can we do to support that school community? and how might we go about thinking about it. So that's part of that feasibility study.
[Theresa Dupont]: I would, I would, I'm sorry, I would highlight that CPA would be eligible for any portion of the feasibility study that would be for outdoor recreation space that serves a public benefit. So if there was some, some thoughts of redesigning the actual interior to accommodate more exterior space, that that element of it wouldn't be eligible, but you know, we would figure that out in the dollar amount calculation. So just wanted to put that out there as a caveat. Perfect.
[Jenny Graham]: And the inside is quite full as well. So there's probably not a lot of opportunity to do anything like that. But you never know how this all shakes out when you get the right people looking at the problem. So that's helpful to know. Paul and Erica, do you have questions about this tab?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Paul, do you want to? I actually have a question about the definition of outdoor because one of the things as part of the school building project for the high school, Waltham, although they had plenty of land, I'm a little confused why they decided to do this, decided to have their, it's not a playground, it's a field actually on top of It's just an elevated field through which parking is underground. And without eminent domain and taking somebody's house nearby, there's no magical, there's no TARDISes and Time Lords to make us have more room without more room. And so one of the thoughts that I know that I've been bantering around is, could we put parking under, not underground, just having the playgrounds above parking So I guess my question is, what is the definition of outdoor recreation space with if it was elevated above at grade parking? Is that something that hasn't even been considered?
[Theresa Dupont]: In terms of how, you know, we have to be careful under Community Preservation Act law about what is the definition of outdoor. recreation space. Some municipalities, it's kind of, I don't want to say ambiguous, but it does kind of differentiate from municipality to municipality. Some just say it's a blanket, any publicly owned parcel that's under Trapdoor 97 protections. In Medford, our school playgrounds serve as public playgrounds. They're not isolated or, you know, exclusive to school use during non-school hours. So in Medford, that type of a project, we wouldn't be able to fund any of the creation of the parking or the surface in which the playground would, well, actually maybe possibly the surface of the playground, if I'm envisioning your scenario correctly. We couldn't create the parking, But we could make it pretty at the end of it with recreation space, recreation use, public amenities on top. Does that answer your question, Paul?
[Paul Ruseau]: It does. I know it's very, I mean, other than I think there's a few places that have gone this route because it is, in fact, more expensive. But I'm sure it's not nearly as expensive as eminent domaining a building. Yes. Thank you. Of course.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Erica, do you have questions? I mean, I think most of my questions are going to come up when we start prioritizing and moving things around, because I'm looking at the paving and I'm wondering which of those issues are accessibility issues and which are kind of general wear and tear, but they're not posing an immediate accessibility issue. But I guess that's what the study is going to be addressing. Member Ruseau, actually, I also had the question about parking underneath a playground space. And what was my other piece was Yeah, around the playgrounds and the last, the McGlynn playground was a very community oriented program. And so whether these quotes were around updating what's there or really rethinking the space. And that seems like it could be the definition between that feasibility study and the design study. So I think most of my questions are gonna come up when we start prioritizing, because my big one is around what are these things that maybe they might not be big and urgent, but if we wait, they compound later. So I'm ready to keep going, I think.
[Kenneth Lord]: Okay. To answer your question about the paving, so the McGlynn and the Andrews, they've already addressed the ADA issues. Yeah, I remember that. I'm not aware of major issues at the other three elementaries. These are mostly parking lots, curbs, you know, worn out sidewalks, things that are starting to, there are some areas where there's heaving and other things that are causing things, but a lot of it is more in the wear and tear category.
[Jenny Graham]: And can none of these paving projects include repaving Freedom Way?
[Kenneth Lord]: Correct. No, that is now, I just found out yesterday that with Tim McGivern, that that is now a that. City property street and that they have not done any improvements, but they're planning something in the next few years. There's
[Suzanne Galusi]: At first, I didn't know if you could hear me. I would, to the paving piece though, say that the Missittuck, we have to wait to see what the study brings, but I would say that the Missittuck has a slight prioritization over the other buildings, especially around the pathway from the staff parking to the school. There's quite a gap that does pose, it's blocked off right now because it does pose a safety issue. And then the front walkway does have some work to do with the Mississippi, so I would say that that has a higher prioritization than the other buildings, but the study will, I think, illuminate that more. And then I also, in addition, because I also had the Roberts pieces that member Rousseau and member Reinfeld have already elevated, but I also have a question around the timeline because the Roberts, unlike the other three buildings, there is no option for outdoor play when this work is happening. So the McGlynn was able to go and use warm out. They were able to work something out. There's also field space in the back. Both the Brooks and the Misituck have adjacent space to go to, and the Roberts does not. So I also would have a question around timeline to see if there's a way to have the least amount of impact to student recess.
[Kenneth Lord]: And Missituk may have trouble getting to that outside space, adjacent space, the playground's kind of in between them.
[Suzanne Galusi]: That's right.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think one, you know, one thing that the Missituk and the Brooks have is that you, you could Do 1 and not the other, so you're not like, obliterating both playgrounds at the same time. Although there probably are some real cost trade offs, because I'm sure it's easier for them to come in. Take it all down, put it all back together having said that I don't. The scale, to me, I think what I'll be interested to learn about in the feasibility design process is the scale of what we were able to do at McGlynn was made possible by its space. Some of those pieces of equipment are very large and would consume the whole lower playground at the Brooks. One piece of equipment would sort of be the whole space. So I think the scale of those playgrounds is certainly a question that will be really interesting to ask and answer, and to balance that with the needs of those school communities in general, so that those playgrounds are just as accessible. At the McGlynn, we enjoyed that the space was not the problem, right? Like, there wasn't really a space issue that we had to grapple with. So we were able to do some really interesting things. But my assumption is all of that would become clear during these design processes. And so, Teresa, I think the other question procedurally that I had is, Way back when we just simply did resurfacing of these playgrounds and when actually the McGlynn Design Study came to be the thing that we did first, we were advised that each school had to go in as its own independent request to CPC. And I think what Ken's trying to say here is, We would like to do 1 study so there can be some. economy of scale across the three properties instead of having to, like, be in a situation where we are funding, like, kind of one at a time and, like, starting from scratch with potentially a new vendor each time this happens. So could you talk a little bit about whether we would be permitted to do one project that would span all of those buildings?
[Theresa Dupont]: Certainly. I do see that the committee would very likely want to see these come in as separate projects only because they would evaluate each project for the merits of the public benefit that it would serve. So would the MSATUK having, and I'm just spitballing here, and I don't speak for the committee, I can only speak from my experience with them, they would evaluate the MSATUK project and then pit it against the roberts and they would hit the roberts against the right so but you know that's how they would have to evaluate each project um so that's not to say that they wouldn't fund all three in the same funding cycle but they i would foresee them requiring them as separate applications um just because again they would they would have to evaluate it as a standalone project in their eyes um i think that they would obviously understand the the cost savings there would be with lumping them all together, and I believe that that would be factored into their consideration strongly. But I may very well be wrong here, but if that's what the past committee has wanted to see, and me having experience with our current committee, I think that's what they would want to see, unfortunately.
[Jenny Graham]: Kristina, did you have a question?
[Paul Ruseau]: Nope, it got answered.
[Jenny Graham]: And Teresa, is that an answer? Like, when do we seek that answer?
[Theresa Dupont]: Um, that so that does come through our eligibility determination process, which is basically like a pre pre op. However, you know, this is just something that's being discussed now in a public setting. Certainly, we could bring it to the committee now just to get their gut check. You know, it's not an actual application, just that this is what we're thinking. How would you respond to this? And that can be, um, you know, considered on our December 9th meeting or early January meeting.
[Jenny Graham]: I think it might make sense to ask you all to consider that in maybe your January meeting because then we'll have passed this through the school committee in terms of its priorities. I think having that answer would just allow us to do the work to build the documentation that's needed in the right way the first time instead of having to scramble at the end. I think that would probably be very useful.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, I can put together like draft a memo based off of this conversation and kick it to this team for you to review. And then we can go from there. Happy to put that on our agenda. Okay, perfect.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you for that.
[Paul Ruseau]: I also think that when that meeting happens, we're gonna do them all. So it's the money saving approach. I mean, whether we do them one every year, or we can get them all done at once. And I realize what else is on the plate is a big key part of that, or what other potential projects are sitting there. But just thinking about how the money gets spent, I mean, we're going to keep coming back.
[Theresa Dupont]: So hopefully. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yes.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay. So, Ken, if I am understanding the list correctly, this was your suggested priority. For these projects for the next year, and it totals about 2 and a half million dollars of allocation for the 27. or sooner timeframe, is that right?
[Kenneth Lord]: My initial prioritization, yes.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay. So I think Erica raised a question about prioritization. So I guess the thing that maybe Erica, if you wanna ask your question and we can figure out whether there are priorities that need to shift here would be the next conversation to have.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I had a pre-question on that, which is looking at our fiscal year, 26 capital plan, are we on track or are there things that are getting bumped? Obviously the phase two of the network refresh, we know that got split across the two fiscal years, but are we gonna come up to May and go, oh no, we have to adjust the capital plan because how are we doing in our 26 plan?
[Kenneth Lord]: The only one I know of that was a slip was the network.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Okay, I know HVAC got delayed, but we're still in this fiscal year, so great.
[Kenneth Lord]: Well, the HVAC project will extend into the summer.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yes, that had been planned.
[Kenneth Lord]: We still have a few other smaller items on the capital plan, some of which are in the operations, there's some air conditioning replacements and stuff, we're working on those, but they're small projects I don't anticipate not being accomplished.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Okay, and then this prioritization list is based on what is most likely to fail or present a clear present danger to folks.
[Kenneth Lord]: As well as the study money getting setting up for the next year. Right. You know, so I get the paving couldn't make it. know, we need to do the study for the paving, but if the doors and windows didn't make it, we could do that in the next year without having a study. Some of these bigger projects, you need to do a study and then fund it the next year. So it's kind of like setting up stuff for those.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Right. And because we did a chunk of studies this year, and we're now seeing what comes out of that to do that work this year. So that makes a lot of sense.
[Kenneth Lord]: But I'm open to, you know, there's a lot here. So it's kind of like, you know, there's some Fire alarm was the most important thing I thought of.
[Jenny Graham]: I think the top level narrative is we need to dig deeper on a number of fronts in FY26. so that we can begin doing the work. So we're in a fine enough position right now if we do these studies, because it's going to take time and years to do the work. But that's true of fire alarm and paving and playground renovation. And then there's some other things where, in FY26, we should be completing projects like the intercom upgrades and the doors and windows and that kind of thing.
[Kenneth Lord]: 27, you mean? 27. Yeah. 26, I can't do it that quick.
[Erika Reinfeld]: And then I guess my other question is, is how squishy are these numbers when we go to other potential vendors, right? I know you kind of got quick and dirty answers from Aviv, who had just done these studies. I don't think we're committed to always working with them. So do we anticipate this is going to stay around?
[Kenneth Lord]: These study numbers are rough. Yeah, you know, just hitting him up really quick and getting some numbers. These may alter a little bit. I don't think they're going to change by an order of magnitude. Okay. But, you know, and we may also decide that, well, you know, it may not make sense to do all five schools of a study of a fire alarm because we're only gonna be able to fund a couple of them in the fiscal year after that. So it might make sense to move some of the study to the next fiscal year to stagger out what we're doing so that the study doesn't become stale, particularly on fire alarm with this code changes. So you're looking at, this is what Habib suggested, that's $2.6 million of work across five buildings and it's pretty invasive work. Um, you know, you couldn't do all that in 1 summer. So, you, we may decide that. Okay, let's do the 2 wallets to the Anderson McGlynn this year. So that we would be scheduling an F. Y. 28 to replace the systems and then F. Y. 28. we studied the 3 elementaries to do those and F. Y. 29. We may schedule that out a little bit. But I was trying to get everything out there that's a possible study.
[Erika Reinfeld]: That makes sense. Do we have a sense of which ones are going to be most urgent, or are they all equally urgent in this model? Because I see the study as a way of saying, OK, which are the priorities to make the upgrades?
[Kenneth Lord]: By age, Anders and McGlynn are two years older than the other two. The Roberts system has some problems. We're able to work out.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Just what I want to hear with the kid at the Roberts.
[Kenneth Lord]: There are things we need to work on, but they're not critical things. But we're noticing that we're having trouble finding parts for that system. And that's a similar system to the other two elementaries. So by age, Andrews and McGlynn are older, but I haven't had the issues there. So they're different systems.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Okay, because the other thing that I would love to be aware of big picture here is if we're studying things and we're that we're doing work in lots of different places so that it's not oh well the McGlynn is getting. all the love and care. So to be able to stagger things in that way, I think is a good faith gesture to the community, obviously driven by urgent need, but.
[Kenneth Lord]: It's also the ability to get multiple projects at one building down to the same place. Yeah, exactly. You can only fit so many, as we learned with the HVAC, you can only get so many guys working at a time, you know, so.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Right. And can you scroll down again? I just want to remind myself what's at the bottom intercom tourism. Okay. Thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: And, um, I think the other question I had about. Paving was these prices. Assume that we're going to contract out to do this paving work, right?
[Unidentified]: Correct.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay. And has there been any conversation with about their. Ability to take this stuff on instead, or no, not yet.
[Kenneth Lord]: There's no discussion.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay. I know that they have their own backlog and I'm quite certain it's enormous and it does not include. Schools, so that may be a non starter, but.
[Kenneth Lord]: Are you referring to streets or for municipal buildings?
[Jenny Graham]: Well, they, they have a backlog for roads and sidewalks. That is like 200 and something million dollars.
[Kenneth Lord]: And a lot of that is probably farmed out to contractors.
[Jenny Graham]: Yes. However, we did just like fund a crew. Right. And so that poor crew, like there's a lot of expectations about what that crew can reasonably do. you know, at any given time, but I just didn't know if there had been any conversations about, you know.
[Kenneth Lord]: But I can certainly have that conversation with Tim McGiven, as well as, you know, let's just say, you know, we asked them to do the Brooks, you know, parking lots and stuff, given the size of their crew, how quickly could they do that in a summer? You know, because it's also, you know, maybe a lot, farming it out may allow us to get it done and not impact the school as much, but that comes at a cost, of course. But I can certainly have that conversation with them.
[Jenny Graham]: And it would just maybe be helpful to understand where that fits.
[Paul Ruseau]: I also wonder, though, if using the city would allow us to avoid procurement and bidding and all that other nonsense. I don't want to say nonsense. I said nonsense. But I mean, all those other steps that. Hurdles. Hurdles, thank you. Although, I mean, I don't know.
[Kenneth Lord]: You'd have to procure the materials. But that's far easier than service, you know, construction. And I'm sure they probably have state contracts they can leverage for asphalt and granite and other materials that they purchase, so.
[Erika Reinfeld]: All right, so the money question, although Member Graham, you look like you're about to say something.
[Jenny Graham]: My only other question was whether The Karen theater railing deserved a slightly higher billing than that. And I, I just.
[Kenneth Lord]: It may be something you can put into the extraordinary repairs account. Right. There's, you know, if I look back at the, um, the operating money, this was all in what I, I'm sorry, wrong one operating here. I categorize $247,000 worth of work as operating work. So that's like probably two years worth of the extraordinary repairs plus other things that come in. So it's possible we could look through this and prioritize the work that's in here, slide some of the smaller items into the operating budget, like the railings, like the condenser replacement if it doesn't go, some of those things could squeeze into there.
[Jenny Graham]: more easily to stretch out that two year timeframe to three potentially.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yeah.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay, got it.
[Erika Reinfeld]: No, that's helpful. Yeah, that was going to be my question about what could get wrapped into the operating and the point I think, to the point of the current theater. We're looking at. a new high school in the not-too-distant future. And so if this is a repair that needs to happen, it really doesn't make sense to put it off and only have this happen for one year.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yeah, it's not a repair.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I feel like it's do it soon or don't do it at all.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yeah. The railings itself are, they don't exist now.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Right.
[Jenny Graham]: It's not a repair.
[Kenneth Lord]: Sorry, yes. I know that space.
[Jenny Graham]: Well, and I think to that point, Ken, maybe the question is whether there's an opportunity to do that in the FY26 Extraordinary Repair Bucket.
[Kenneth Lord]: Potentially, there's a lot of other stuff that's in there too though. I'm getting quotes and things on that. I'm still waiting to quote for this railing. I'm trying to get the company to give us that. It's been difficult.
[Jenny Graham]: So that would be the other sort of maybe variable to think about before we move it out. Okay. Paul and Erica, what other questions do you have about prioritization?
[Paul Ruseau]: Not prioritization, but I see that, Mr. Tucci has put in things here that I feel like, why would that not be a thing that all the schools should probably need at the same time? And I'm not suggesting, if they didn't ask, that we should just do it. But I'm just sensitive. I know the other school committee members are just sensitive to, you know, one school getting things and other schools needing them but not getting them. And the conversation after the fact, well, they never asked, doesn't really hold a lot of water with the people who will be complaining. So I just think that, you know, I mean, I feel like as long as I've had kids in the schools, the complaints that the rugs are ancient and dirty, and there's lots of issues there, but... How many donors choose projects either for rugs? Exactly. So, you know, this is like one more thing for Ken to put on his very long to-do list, but there are certain items that, I mean, a rug in an elementary school in a kindergarten has a lifespan, and we shouldn't wait for complaints. to decide it's that time to just put them on a schedule. And I have no clue how long it actually is. And I also worry about people buying rugs through DonorsChoose because fire code stuff, we can't just have anything in a class. And of course, if we're not buying it, I don't think it's fair to say, no, no, you've got to buy only these allowed kinds. to people who are doing a donor's choose to get a new rug. And I feel like we're talking about a rug, even though we're talking about many millions of dollars here, but they're expensive. The ones that meet fire codes for schools and all that stuff, so.
[Jenny Graham]: I think that's actually maybe a bigger conversation for the next term, which is we have lots of entities that buy things on behalf of classrooms and schools, right? Like our PTOs are very active in that way. And one of like my huge frustrations from my time on the PTO before I was elected to the school committee is, we would purchase things and turn them over and then they would not be maintained, right? Or we would turn them over and then they would, with some like handshake agreement that never was fulfilled. Like there was a year where we bought a new rug for every classroom teacher. And the ask was, can they just be cleaned every year in the summer? And then they never got cleaned. So I think there's like a bigger quest. There's like something a little bit broader there about how to collaborate with people who are trying to help us in a full circle kind of way, right? Because nobody wants to buy things for us that we shouldn't have, right? But people don't know. And so how do we create an easy pathway for that to happen and to understand what is coming into the universe of essentially our expectation of maintenance? that we need to know about, because I don't think we have a good line of sight of what those things are. And then there's just all kinds of questions about, well, like, I don't know where that came from, or I don't know who's supposed to do that thing. And we could, like, sort of tighten up all of that process a little bit for sure upcoming.
[Kenneth Lord]: One thing to keep in mind about the McGlynn is the seating and the rug replacement has a direct correlation to the amount of outside rentals we have in there. you have a massive rental in there every single weekend that's adding a ton more wear and tear to that building than any other building.
[Erika Reinfeld]: So that's maybe looking at our, again, looking at rental rates in community schools. And that's a Rob question as well. But I think that's fair. And I know some of the rental groups have contributed to the lighting system at the McGlynn. we're looking at a donation for the audio system from a group of caregivers, but yeah.
[Jenny Graham]: And I think that is like another thing for us to consider talking about in the next term in terms of like what, you know, what are people paying for rentals and how are we like, how are we managing all of that in a consistent way? And does it cover, It's one thing to cover the cost of the maintenance and the custodial who are on site when they're there. That's one cost, but then there's what it costs to heat and power the building, and then there's yet another cost about wear and tear. All of these things happen faster when we have heavy rental use. I'm not suggesting we shouldn't want our schools to be used in this way because I think it's great. It just has to not disadvantage the mission of the schools at the same time, right? So there's a big conversation to have there as well.
[Suzanne Galusi]: I'm actually very excited to have that conversation. Are you? I am just because I think we do appreciate a lot of the partnerships and definitely schools are community spaces, but I do think we need some clarity added to the use of our schools and down to the how and the when and the how much and the why. definitely needs to be a conversation so that we're adding more clarity to that. I think the McGlynn has seen a lot of wear and tear. I think there's also protective coating that is on the stage pretty much 24-7 to protect the wood of the stage. But I think just that overall conversation definitely needs to be had.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah. Is that building and ground subcommittee? Is that a separate, is that an offline conversation? Is that this group? I'm not sure it's this group.
[Jenny Graham]: Well, I don't know what group it is actually, but I also think the groups are subject to change.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah. I'm just thinking about what we're organizing for.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. Yeah. I think we should have that conversation to figure out who, you know, how the upcoming committee wants to organize.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I mean, because there's an argument for splitting strategic and capital planning into two, given the strategic planning process that's about to come online.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Anyway, that's a separate conversation, not on the agenda. So I guess we're back to the priorities here. Are there any other questions or objections? No, I think just to identify which of these, right, if we're looking at staggering some of these studies to highlight which ones come first and then if there's another study that needs to happen. maybe that doesn't have that time urgency constraint, then the schools that aren't getting the urgent ones get the other study and flip-flop in subsequent fiscal years, right?
[Jenny Graham]: So, are there other like, so I think there's some numbers that we're still trying to refine. So I think. I'm thinking December 15th is still the right date for us to bring this forward. Um, but not sure if there's anything else that you all are thinking about that we need to talk about before. We feel like we're ready to bring this forward to the committee. Um, and or if we need to try to shoehorn another meeting in to have more discussion, so I don't know how you all are feeling about where we're at.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I mean, last year we had 2 meetings in the 2nd, 1. before we presented to the whole committee. And the second one was about projecting out, saying these are the things we've chosen for this year. And in context, here's what's coming and why we've prioritized these. So I think that needs to happen. I do think it would be good for this group to be on the same page in presenting that. But I am also aware that December 15th is less than a month away, and we've got Thanksgiving and all sorts of other things. We do have this committee to meet to, I think, discuss intra-district policies.
[Jenny Graham]: On December 8. And I'm sort of wondering if, like, we use that time to have a second conversation about this and we move the inter-district into January and figure out like where it's proper home is as potentially the subcommittees change because I don't really foresee that we could pull off an inter-district policy in December 2025 at this point. So do we want to? I mean the only the reason that was being loud.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Oh, sorry, Erica, what were you saying? No, no, no. Did you hear the siren? I muted because- No. Okay. It was a roaring siren heading down the street. As I recall, we scheduled the intra-district enrollment policy in order to beat the kindergarten registration so that we had that information in place as soon as people started asking questions about why are they registered for a school that's not in their backyard? Am I right about that, Dr. Galusi? That was our motivation?
[Suzanne Galusi]: I think there were a couple pieces of motivation. I think some of this did come out from the enrollment in overcrowding subcommittee report that I gave in May, because some of the inter-district transfers were around at least that I was a part of when I gave that presentation, was around because we were not able to have full capacity of afterschool care. So a lot of the inter-district transfers were childcare related for afterschool. And then there was the piece around inter-district transfers for keeping families together, for specialized sub-separate programming.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Right, but was kindergarten registration, was that our deadline or did I just hallucinate that? Was that a deadline? It doesn't sound like- We may not have. I don't remember that hard deadline.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, I don't remember kindergarten registration either. I mean, certainly before we start, you know, those inter-district conversations tend to happen closer to the end of the school year, so then we have a little bit of time. I'm not thinking of anything that has to happen.
[Erika Reinfeld]: No, I think it was just kindergarten registration, but I think there is a window there. If that's not urgent, then I'm fine to use the December 8th meeting for this since it's on the calendar. Okay.
[Jenny Graham]: Perfect. My calendar is really miserable, so I'm glad to not have to find another hour.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would just ask that we, when we're ready for the presentation at school committee, that we give a 90 second primer on what does it mean to be net school spending eligible and all this other stuff, because if anything, it's important, but it's also not exactly intuitive. So just a note for the presentation when we do get to it.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, so I am thinking in terms of next steps, Ken and I can work on forming this into maybe two things. One is, here's what was previously funded in a status. Second is, here's the recommendation and how it lays out for FY27 forward. And then maybe there's like another part of like describing like one, maybe if we do it one time, we don't have to do it every year. Like those, those things exactly remember. So like, here's our, like, as a reminder, here's our like little visual process and here's what these things mean so that if we can get that right one time, it's going to work for all the times, right? That people have these questions. So I'm wondering if those are maybe the 2 things that need to happen. Um, before the 8th, I don't know if anyone wants to volunteer for number 2. What was number 2, like, outlining, like, what is what is our capital planning process? And what are these, like, important terms and definitions just so that.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Well, is it the process and these are the buckets where things come from and why they can go in one bucket and not in another?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. Just looking at the policy.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I remember Jerry gave, Mr. McHugh gave us a lovely briefer on that.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. And I'm just thinking like, if we write it down in a something visual one time, it will be better than if we talk about it 10 times.
[Suzanne Galusi]: I think that I can handle that with Will and the finance office.
[Paul Ruseau]: Look at the policy. We did not update it, but there is one date, I believe, or maybe a couple of dates that are not. When we did this last year, there was a date or two that were sort of not possible or feasible or whatever the words were. So just keep that in mind when you look at the dates in the actual policy that you might not wanna freak out about how, wait, we can't do that, can't meet that date. I think it was getting the target date we have is February 28th and- For the budget, not for capital, right? No, this is the capital improvement planning policy.
[Jenny Graham]: So, I think last year we ended up way ahead of the schedule because. We, I think the policy says, have a committee of the whole and then have a vote and we did that all in 1 meeting. Um, and so we were done in December last year when I think we weren't scheduled to be done until before that.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, the budget calendar definitely shifted because of override. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. That's right. The budget was the thing that moved.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Because it was, there was a sudden infusion of funds that we maybe didn't want to rush through allocating.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. Thank you. So do look at the policy then.
[Jenny Graham]: I was like, I think we actually, I think we beat the, I think we beat the clock on this one. Okay. So Ken, I'll connect with you and we can like ship this out and then put that visual together and then we should be in good shape. And I am thinking we can probably do this in one meeting again, instead of trying to have a committee of the whole and then a meeting to take the vote.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I think we won't have Teresa, the CPA's best guess at how they would treat these applications by then. You can put that just in the comments. Which is fine. I just, I think that's, if that's the one piece we're missing, we're in good shape.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah. And if I may. I can have an administrative conversation with our chairperson to see what her gut is to if that is at all helpful. I think it would need, it would still need to go before our committee for a vote on.
[Erika Reinfeld]: an official stance of how they would accept the application, but if that's at all helpful, I can get a... It is for mapping purposes and it can get tweaked if the official vote doesn't match, but I think two gut checks is a great start.
[Theresa Dupont]: Okay, perfect. All right, I'll get that from her and send along an official memo from us and from me and the chairperson. Thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: Any other questions or comments?
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to comment on how much I appreciate the administration's work on this. I'm just remembering when I joined the school committee and the differences between now and then are beyond stark. in what we are, in what we understand about the state of things. And, you know, knowing isn't, I don't know, is half the battle, but knowing is certainly required to even go to battle on these numbers. So I'm beyond thankful and very excited to find this money.
[Erika Reinfeld]: And extra thanks to Ken for diving in and jumping on this. This is a delight of a view of what we're doing.
[Unidentified]: Absolutely. You're welcome.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Bedford Public Schools is very lucky to have Ken Lord. Absolutely.
[Jenny Graham]: OK. I think that's it. It's only 511. OK. I have a little time before my next meeting. Is there a motion to adjourn? I'll motion to adjourn. Seconded by Member Reinfeld. Seconded by Member Ruseau. I'll call the roll. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Ruseau?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Jenny Graham]: Member Graham? Yes. Three in the affirmative, zero in the negative. Motion is adjourned. Meeting is adjourned.
|
total time: 24.27 minutes total words: 1707 |
total time: 6.99 minutes total words: 609 |
total time: 8.2 minutes total words: 890 |
total time: 3.47 minutes total words: 296 |