School Board Work Session

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceokay good evening tonight is Monday October 20th of 2025 and this is the work session of the city of Fairfax school presentations of the school board now the joint meeting presentation planning do we need this yeah okay so we'll start with

Dan Phillipsstaffthat purpose okay

Carolyn Pitchesby voicewe're gonna start with item one which is the joint meeting presentation planning for the joint meeting with the Fairfax County I have some thoughts about the agenda item for our contribution. I would like to, in some way, shape, or form, talk about modernizing the SSA board

Sarah Kelseyto board.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceIs

Sarah Kelseythat in the city presentation or in the SSA discussion?

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceWhat are you talking about?

Amit HickmanOn your second page, it's just kind of a...

Kristina CecereOh, you did something. I just did

Carolyn Pitchesby voicelike a

Kristina Ceceregeneric.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceThat's what I was at. I don't know if we're doing a presentation.

Sarah KelseyOkay.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceSo that, you know, this is the same board as last year. The presentations, I don't think we all need to meet each other again. I think that's wasted time. We don't, it's not, you know, we would want to have enough time to talk about things that are consequential. So I can talk to you.

Lauren Bartelmeby voiceSo we set the total agenda for this meeting.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceNo, we say this is what we would like on the agenda. The county says this is what they would like to discuss. We have done like presentations to sort of familiarize new board members with the city-county relationship. But the issue is that nobody has changed seats. It's the same people last year for both boards. So what are you shaking?

Kristina CecereWe're new.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceBut didn't you guys come to the...

Kristina CecereThey came to

Carolyn Pitchesby voicethe dinner.

Kristina CecereI thought you sat in public... It's a public meeting. Yeah, I didn't come to the public meeting.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceOh, you didn't come to the meeting. Okay. I

Kristina Cecerearrived

Carolyn Pitchesby voicelater. But

Amit HickmanI think in turn, regardless, FCPS has seen, their school board has seen the presentation. Unless

Carolyn Pitchesby voicethere's something you want to know about FCPS, I would prefer not to have... So

Amit Hickmanstill continue, do introductions, that's important. Yeah,

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceintroductions are always important. I wouldn't... But I don't... My feeling is I don't need them to spend 20 minutes talking about what they're... Yeah, we follow what they're doing. I've been at every, almost every school board meeting since July. I think that we don't really need to

Kristina Cecerewaste

Carolyn Pitchesby voicetime. And so I can speak with Sandy about, you know, if they're okay with just having an agenda for topics of discussion, if everybody's okay with that. Unless somebody really would like to do some sort of, like here, pictures of our schools

Lauren Bartelmeby voiceand... I mean, I agree with you and I think that the SSA discussion, those board members probably don't know anything about it.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceThey know very

Lauren Bartelmeby voicelittle because... Like, they haven't gotten into the weeds of some of the stuff

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceyet. No, you're 100% correct because our schools, for most of them, this is not their magisterial district. Other than Carl Frisch and Sandy Anderson and the at-large members, they don't really, we're not part of their district, their region.

Amit HickmanAnd we send them the SSA document ahead of time? Yes,

Carolyn Pitchesby voicewe would absolutely have to send that and the tuition formula. Does that sound okay? Okay. Generally, I can't remember. How long was the meeting? It was like an hour, right? Yeah. Let me find out from Sandy also if there's anything pressing on their side that they wanted, you know. But this is, I'm looking at it this year, this is a meeting that is about the relationship between the county and the city and how we are working together or not working together. and I think that you know there there are some I think I don't think anybody would disagree that the contract needs to be modernized whether that's amendments a total rework I don't know but I'd like to have see what the sort the temperature is, you know, like how we can approach this with them.

So it does not become, you know, a contentious situation. Because that's the last thing that I think any of us, you know, I know that there's a degree of angst in the community about the cost of the contract and not connecting dots about per-pupil tuition rates across the region. There are some people who have some very strong opinions about what we're getting as part of the agreement in terms of instruction, influence, decision-making. I think all of that are things that we would probably need to... Now this would just be sort of the introduction like, hey, we're thinking about this and we're moving, you know, we're moving in this direction just so that they can sort of warm up to the idea I would say and they also will have you know we need to start working on

this book the election cycles really I hate to say they kind of screw us because we are every two years so but then there's on the op you know so we're always it's always a new board somewhere and the last two iterations of the county board have been a 70% plus turnover so you're starting completely fresh. Is everybody okay with SSA being, is there anything, what are some other topics that you all would consider if that's not something that. I guess I a follow-up question related

Lauren Bartelmeby voiceto SSA first. Could we, if they're down with talking about that, could we go through points or specific things that we want to talk about with the SSA?

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceYeah, and I think that that would be something we would have to work on as a board prior, like in a work session possibly. Like what are the most glaring components, you know, of either the SSA or the tuition contract, the SSA that we are seeking to, I don't want to say correct necessarily, but again, I'll just keep using the word modernized because this contract was signed in 1978. Things that we have now, we have a lot of components to our education system and facilities that were not in existence then, just thinking about technology. So like back then it was said that we had to physically attend board meetings because nothing was televised, right? Like are we going to keep that? Which would go both

ways for also our liaison. Yes, so they're just things about in the contract we back then. We didn't have as much the special education services. There was no AAP. There was...

Amit HickmanDo you think it makes sense to begin the discussion or is it more important to go through and really talk about the different parts, make sure they understand the SSA? Because are they going to have time, my guess is no, to go through and have any conversations? I don't want to blindside

Carolyn Pitchesby voicethem. Well, they should review the documents before the meeting. Yes. That would

Amit Hickmanbe... But as a board, they wouldn't have had any chance to discuss anything.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceOh, about the SSA? Probably not. I mean, I think that's more on us.

Amit HickmanSo it's more of a... It's not particularly going to be a back

Carolyn Pitchesby voice-in

Amit Hickman-forth conversation. It'll be more of a here...

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceYes, because let's be honest. Why do they care? We're paying them, right? Nothing's changing.

Amit HickmanBut there might be... they

Carolyn Pitchesby voicewould disagree with us if we want to change something that's going to be uncomfortable for them. Or, you know, maybe cost them, like, some money. So I do think that... Do we almost

Amit Hickmanwant to present it to them in some ways? I

Carolyn Pitchesby voicedo think that we should say, here are the components of this agreement that no longer work for the city

Amit Hickmanof Fairfax

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceschools.

Amit HickmanBut even as, like, a PowerPoint of, like, let's look at this reading. Yeah. So it is in some ways a presentation. It's just not a presentation

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceof

Amit Hickmanthe city.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceIt's not a city presentation. It's a presentation of the SSA. And like this is our agenda topic that, you know, we would like to discuss. And that would probably be, you know, we'd have to, this is something obviously we wait for Carrie because we're going to need her in terms of the presentation and the communication piece. But I would start thinking about the SSA, the tuition contract, what are some, you know, like I said, what are some components of either of those that really jump out at you? Can we

Lauren Bartelmeby voiceget JC to come? We

Carolyn Pitchesby voicecould, but JC doesn't really, his understanding is probably no different than ours. Yeah, he doesn't know what's in, part of the issue is the tuition, the itemized, tuition bill isn't really itemized, it's itemized, but when you say, here's our operational costs, well, okay, that's fantastic, that's an item on the tuition bill that we're responsible for a percentage of, but what are you attributing to that operational cost? Because I venture to say we are paying for some operational cost somewhere that we don't utilize. Whether, you know, so I think that in, you know, JC and I talked extensively about the tuition bill and you know it was originally when I asked him about the classroom rental that he went in and you know really read what that piece was.

Everything else in the SSA is, I hate to say it, you know you read it and what does it tell you? Not a whole lot because back then there really wasn't a whole lot to talk about other than your kids in a seat in our building and we have kids in a seat in your building and there are teachers and your kids ride buses and there are these buildings. That's about the extent of the SSA. So, you know, obviously we'll have to put this on a work session and I think the best way to be productive in that work session For everybody to look at the SSA, look at the tuition contract. I am more than happy to answer questions or sit down with anybody who wants to really understand what the tuition contract, what it means.

because and I do have the tuition contracts from 19 the tuition bills sorry not contract but the bill is from the first which was 1980 after they signed the contract in 78 the first official tuition bill that we got was in 1980 and And I have almost, I think I have almost all of them. So, and I'm happy to go over the classroom rental component and explain there's a double dipping. It was, I have some memos from back then, late 70s to 1984 regarding some parts of the the SSA that were identified as problematic back then. And I think it's okay to bring it up to say, look, I think once they, for them this isn't something that's on their mind. It doesn't affect them the way it affects us. We are less than 2% of their overall student population.

The majority, 80% of those, 70% of those board members have nothing to do with the city of Fairfax schools in general. They might have one kid who attends the academy part time. if that so but I do think that if we presented in a way like hey this is you know what was signed in 1978 it is now 2025 and here are some you know concerning elements of this agreement and the contract

Kristina Cecereand I even think the population started no no you're not

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceinterrupting

Kristina Cecerethe just even the changes student population has grown exponentially compared to our city itself. I mean, and that, well, you know, that ratio is not reflected in the calculation.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceSo it's funny. I will tell you when we signed the contract, there was 170,000 students in Fairfax County and we had 4,550 something students, which is significantly more than we have now. And they had 20,000 less. So we were actually represented a larger portion of the county when we signed the contract. That being said, it wasn't a majority or even a significant percentage. But there was a lot of history behind that timing or during that time. It was the county that terminated the contract. There was quite an argument that went on between the city and the county at that time. and they pulled this this school's contract in retaliation of the city you know city became an independent city and then decided to have their own fire and

police which you have to go back and read all them it pissed off the county they were not happy about that so they said we're pulling the schools contract If you don't want our fire and our police, you can run your own schools too. And it was this whole thing. And, you know, the city was, in my opinion, it seems like they were groveling. Like, we need the school's contract. So I think in a lot of ways they agreed to some things that I don't think they would agree to now. So. And back then, I'm not sure I'd have to look at the 62 contract. I don't know if they had to provide, how long they had to provide services beyond the termination. That was worked into the 78 contract that even if, you know, say the city decided to

terminate it, we still had to maintain the contract for three years beyond. We're giving you notice. So we'll have to... There is some history also involved that explains why I think back then some of the... I mean, if you look at the news articles, Janice Miller wrote it against the school contract in 1978. So she did not think it was a good deal. a good deal. Many people, Jack Rust didn't think it was a good deal. So, I think if

Dan Phillipsstaffyou really,

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceyeah,

Dan PhillipsstaffDan. Would you be asking them to take a joint look at it? Yes,

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceI think that they, I think they should 100% look at the school services agreement. Look at our tuition, what we get. Like, hey, this is the contract that's in the SSA, and this is what you give us. Would you be okay paying this with just this information? You know, I think it, I don't, I think we, you know, the city has been very, Now granted, we have gotten great, you know, I would say my kids went through K through 12. I graduated from South Lakes High School. We've had great services and I don't think we've paid too much. If you look what we're paying per pupil compared to, I mean sure, are we paying more than Manassas Park and Prince William County? yes but do you want to be a part of a system that is met Manassas Park or

Prince William County

Kristina Cecereto be fair I mean Prince William I think is subsidized with data centers to yeah now yeah I mean they're there are costs yeah same with loud

Amit Hickmanwe need to have or are they going to want to have like we're making decisions but you know you have any legal counsel involved because this is a contract. I think we might want to check on that.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceWe don't. Because we're not opening the contract then. You can have any sort of conversation. Nobody's voting on anything. We're not proposing anything. We're just saying, look, we think it's important that you all understand what we are dealing with. And here, this is where our challenges are and where we feel that a conversation needs to be had regarding this agreement and this contract. If they say, yeah, go ahead and open it, we're not going to talk about it, go ahead and open it, then you kind of know where it's going, right? So then that's a decision to be made then. Do you want to risk it? or do you just want to, you know? But I do think that many people on that board would be interested in hearing what we have to say.

Are there people on that board who don't care? Probably. But I think there are plenty of people who would agree that this is important to us We do contribute to FCPS. And while we're not a significant force for every magisterial district, we are centrally located. Did they use, I don't want to say they use us, but they do use our facilities probably more than any other school. In this area, for sure. In this area. So.

Dan PhillipsstaffThen forgive me if you said this earlier on when I was setting up here. So are we going to ask for a conversation or a study? Are we not ready to decide that? Well

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceI think it's a conversation first. Like, are you willing to go down this rabbit hole with

Lauren Bartelmeby voiceus? Without opening up

Carolyn Pitchesby voicethe legal part. Without opening the legal part, are you willing? Because if you're not willing to look at the contract and, you know, that kind of says it all. Either we have to legally just open it, because you don't have to open up the whole contract. You can do a board-to-board amendment or addendum.

Dan PhillipsstaffHonestly, even opening it doesn't change the terms that two people have to agree to be out before you're out.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceRight. I just don't want, I'm not playing the game of go ahead, open it.

Amit HickmanThat's also not our, that's not our goal. Our goal is a conversation to adjust it, as you said in the very beginning, when you brought it up, to modernize and to make sure that the contract is clear for this day and age. So don't think it's a matter of anybody leaving, anybody. It's a matter of, hey, is this working? And for the parties that it's not working for, what areas does it need? Or it can be working and we still need further clarification. Are there areas that we can flush it out? I mean, I think the modernization is the word for it. It just needs to be looked at and a conversation needs to be had. What are the gaps?

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceYes, and please know that threats from anybody in the financial office, this is not their contract. They would have to, do you know what I'm saying? This is a board-to-board agreement.

Amit HickmanAnd I don't think we're going into it. A board of

Carolyn Pitchesby voicesupervisors, school board, city council, school board agreement.

Amit HickmanAnd we're not particularly also saying we're coming into a just-for-the-money aspect. No. But some of this is that there's other things of can we flesh out what we're providing, what they are providing, and what that looks like in 2025 as opposed to

Lauren Bartelmeby voice1970. I think the classroom rental fee, like talking about that and understanding what it is.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceYeah,

Lauren Bartelmeby voiceand

Carolyn Pitchesby voicedebt service. Are we paying for your debt service? Why are you not paying our debt service? I do think you should be careful

Amit Hickmanabout questions because I don't know that people are going to have the answers to the questions.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceOkay, and let me clarify. That is not a question for their school board. Their school board has no idea what we are paying for. The actual itemized bill, that's a question for their financial office. And the issue with that is we don't have to do anything. We have a right to ask them to clarify what it is that we're paying for. If they refuse, then legally we would ask our attorney to get

Dan Phillipsstaffthe

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceinformation, force the information.

Dan PhillipsstaffYou know, realistically too, we might look at it and everybody might decide it actually works for both of us, just leave it alone.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceYeah, it's not like we're paying $30,000 a year per kid and they're paying $20,000 a year. We generally pay between $500 to $1,000 more per pupil, and there have been years where we have paid less than they pay per pupil. Nobody really, it's quite literally luck that it has worked out that way because there are quite a few areas of the contract where we're not really, nobody can really say for sure, like, how they got these numbers. And they were agreed. Here's the thing, like the attorney said, the city signed this contract. So they knew, regardless if these numbers don't make any sense, and it is quite apparent in a lot of the memos that the city acknowledged that some of these percentages were either,

either you couldn't explain where they came from or the city felt like they were unfair. They still signed the contract. We have no recourse. We weren't there. I mean, I was whatever, eight years old when they signed the contract, but we have no recourse. The city signed the contract. It has no termination date. They signed a contract that has no termination date. It also does not say that the contract needs to be revised every 5 to 10 or 15 years. It says nothing. At

Dan Phillipsstaffthe end of the day, too, the way those numbers have lined up being just a little off when we're in the oven, it's a pretty good guess that they made when they came up with those multipliers and all that stuff.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceI talked to Janice about this. She's like, I have no idea how it always works out. She said, but it does. Yeah. She said, I have no idea. She was like, nobody really, so.

Kristina CecereAnd that, I mean, I think you bring up a good point of that, you know, in the conversation of modernization, do we see whether the board is open to maybe establishing as part of this annual meeting we do have to have a periodic review of the contract and see, like sort of just, we can add that. It's actually a best practice. It doesn't have to be in the document, but just more.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceBut that would be, if we were able to get everyone around the table, that would be an amendment to the contract or an addendum that, hey, section 18.5, we're going to make sure five years that this contract is reviewed by whatever boards are in office. And nine times out of ten, it's really only us that's going to care. I mean, we are a rounding error in their budget. We are. I mean, their budget is billions of dollars. and we pay them $77 million.

Kristina CecereI don't disagree with

Carolyn Pitchesby voicethat. I'm just saying, even if we got it to a point, even if it was like, oh, they're going to pay us $2 million less next year, I'm not so sure that they would probably be like, okay, that's reasonable. It all makes sense now. But they could go the other direction, too, where they're like, no, we're not going to change it.

Kristina CecereI don't disagree with that. I think that relationship is we do get amazing services with the tuition bill that we do have. But on the other end, we do provide them seats in a very difficult area to figure out the boundaries here. I mean, how do you shift 2,000 kids? 2,440 kids.

Lauren Bartelmeby voiceYeah, I mean, especially with the drama in the western end of the county at the moment. We're pulling kids from the western end of the county. speak

Carolyn Pitchesby voicewith one of their board members about the new high school and there had been conversation about it being a magnet school they're looking to have it be an overflow high school for Centerville and Chantilly which would would that's what we're pulling from that end of the county from Hampton Chase and Office Stringfellow and Clifton Road but they're all also possibly looking at a magnet component in terms of doing something with aviation since it's so close to the airport so yes they they have kids in our buildings but that could affect us if they everybody that comes to us from the Chantilly Centerville who would normally logically be part of that magisterial district they would end up being in the King Abdullah school

Kristina Cecereso

Carolyn Pitchesby voicewe tread very lightly. Not bring up that school. Yep. But just knowing, like, we're very centrally located in the county.

Lauren Bartelmeby voiceVery centrally located.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceThat doesn't mean we couldn't take kids on from Woodson. They're overcrowded at Woodson. We could take kids, I mean, think about even Oakton. They had a huge renovation. I think they're almost at capacity. Like, there are areas where we are in a good position geographically to help them. So, all right. So, we'll just leave that, and I'll figure out from Sandy, possibly, if they have something that they, she might say, no, let's just talk about that, which would be great, because then we don't have, I mean, I don't think they have anything pressing for us anyway. Not that they brought to anyone's attention. So.

Lauren Bartelmeby voiceCan you send the

Sarah KelseySSA and all the amendments that are out there so that we have a boot set of everything? There are no amendments. I thought there was one. Nope. I thought

Carolyn Pitchesby voicewe did one just catchments. There, yeah, but they're not, they're not amendments. We've come MOUs, but they're not

Amit Hickmanamendments.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceYeah. Okay.

Sarah KelseyBut. Okay.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceYeah, there's just. I'm thinking one like a couple years back. No. We didn't. No, there's not been anything done in a couple of years. Okay, Dan, are you ready?

Dan PhillipsstaffOkay. Just a brief update on this. This is really just a summary of the notes that I sent to you last week, just so we'd have a chance to talk it through in real time. So, just as you know, we met with both architecture firms, Mosley Architects and Architecture Inc. Our team, the Barb and Kerry, met with the team and we kind of came away from the, the purpose of it was almost like a pre-planning, or a planning pre-meeting is a better way to put it, just so we could start getting our heads around the scope of the things that we needed to look at. And both meetings went really well. I think we walked away from it feeling like we're in great hands. Both firms are so competent. They've worked with FCPS schools before, so they're familiar with the region, the area,

they know us. at least one of the two firms has built buildings in the city of Fairfax before. And I just felt like it's, you know, there'll be moments where things feel painful I'm sure, but I really do think we're working with people that are smart and fun and going to be easy to work with and pay attention to us and all those things. I think it's going to be a fun process. And so just an opportunity tonight to kind of look at some of the things and to think in real time if you have questions or thoughts or things that you're wondering about. One thing that is kind of cool, they are familiar with each other already and one of the architects reached out to the other and they got together also to talk about ways to bring, in some

cases verbiage, but just sort of the structure so that both school communities feel like the process is similar. No one's going to feel like somebody else is getting more than they are. And obviously it will be our job to monitor that and make sure it stays that way, but so far we're off to a good start. And they were all good with that idea. like they see the benefit for both firms for that. And so if you want to, I'll just, I'll share a couple things and you can ask some questions. There's only nine slides, but they're quick ones. This is a tentative timeline, and we had a question about kind of the overall timeline. And if you remember, we've got funding to get us through the end of FY26, so the end of June 26.

So you can sort of see, like when we talked to these guys, we were thinking first, what do we need to talk about to get us through January, assuming that we'd have a new superintendent in the seat by that point, because we don't want to go too far without that new person. We also don't have time to sit around and wait, so we want to get some things kind of going. And then also just sort of sketch out what happens from there, if we get the funding that we're expecting to get from city council, kind of what happens down the road. and again this is architecture Inc sent us a graphic and a narrative and Mosley sent us a narrative so I'm going to show you the Providence graphic and the Mosley narrative in just a second but just if you can see through end of

March we've got planning things and we'll talk about it more specifics getting on a second but that's sort of where we are so April through June would be continued planning if we have a feeling in April that we're not going to take a break. If we do anticipate getting funding to continue the project and finish the job as we intend, those months would be filled with more planning also. And so just there's you know there's design, there's I'm going to show you kind of what we're going to talk about with the community, but there's different phases and the last phase is the one where you actually see shovels in the ground and all that stuff. That's construction, theoretically starting January of 28 you see everything before that permitting bids and awards all those

sort of things a lot of design and planning before that but construction takes two and a half years with the intent or the goal and remember this is like it's a long way off right now and a lot of things can happen but if everything lined up and the weather was good and funding was right and we were productive in our planning pieces you might be able to open the school in Sorry, September of 2030. I just took two years off of that. Just be anticipating. I'd like to be there at the end. And so SC means substantial completion. So August of 2030 aiming for substantial completion. Let's see if I have anything in my notes.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceWhy don't you talk about SD just for people who are DD.

Dan PhillipsstaffDD, well, I'll tell you what. Let me go to the other narrative because it's going to spell it out a little bit better. for Daniel's run. Let me see something real quick in my notes to see if there's anything I wanted to... No, there we go. And again, just remembering that anything after June 2026 is tentative because the funding isn't in place right now. And so then looking at the Mosley architecture firm narrative in the same way, You know both firms talk in terms of milestone dates. I think that's probably an industry standard. Take a second just read that. Well since we're recording We've proposed a schedule and will work through the owner to accommodate mutually agreed upon milestone dates and understand that the city will authorize the four phases of the project

Based upon project viability and funding availability We've assumed 28 months for design 10 months for permitting and bidding and 32 months for construction administrative service Administration Services. We anticipate a construction NTP notice to proceed issued in May of 2028 Substantial completion in July of 2030 and school opening in September 2030 We will provide a project schedule for design and permitting activities For the purposes of this proposal we assume regular update meetings in person or by web link during design Activities at a mutually agreed upon frequency agreed to frequency and so basically this is the narrative version of the same thing. There's a month differential from that substantial completion in July versus August, but you can see seasoned

professionals, two different firms, and they both came to the same conclusion about the sort of time frame that we'd be looking at to do these projects. And so questions about that, you kind of get the idea design is where we're doing all the things that we dream about doing. What's it going to look like? What do we want in there, what are the new innovative things, what's old and we don't need it anymore, what are our big spaces look like, is there anything innovative that we want to do in the classroom, and you know even thinking about things like technology and other things like what wiring do we need to put in something so we don't have this giant cord drive across the table, things like that. Bidding and permitting is just what you think, it's like going out

to bid for the construction work. Now both of these firms would be with us from now through the end of the process. So they design it, they work with the supermitting and bidding. The way their contract is written is they're locked in until the last shovel's emptied. And then they bid for the actual construction and other pieces along the way. There are other professionals who would come in and assist. They both have, I don't think they're all design teams, they both have teams of experts, so engineers, designers, financial folks, everything that work with them. Some of those overlap. So some of the people we're going to be doing both projects, organizations and so like there you might see the same engineering truck at

Daniels Ron one week in Providence the next and you might see different ones that it won't really make anything any difference it's just like they're both doing the same work basically there's nothing you know other than I mean there'll be sight differences and community wishes that might be different things like that but both of these things are building kind of the same building on very similar terrain in the same community so questions about that either this time once just

Kristina Cecerewant to make a quick statement not like that's fantastic to see that this process if all those stars align is six years from when the bond was passed that the schools we completed so you're earlier hopefully yes long days and exactly stars align everything else that's a fantastic time and I really hope we can absolutely absolutely do that so it

Dan Phillipsstafffeels close too doesn't it? When you get

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceto be this age everything feels very

Dan Phillipsstaffclose. It's all tentative isn't it? Yeah that's right. Alright so there's those and we can come back if you come up with any other thoughts or questions on that one. Then just looking at a more specific schedule for us for the next few months. basically both sites, both teams will be doing simultaneously getting data and talking to the community. So it's actually the same thing. Some of it's environmental data and building data. So we already did a walkthrough of Providence last week with the team of about 20. So engineers, security folks, everybody who's going to cafeteria design people, all that food service design. And then all those people, they come in, they walk the building, they reaffirm what was in the

assessment, they see what broke since then or what might have changed, you know what I mean? And they also probably reevaluate and say like, well, I think that's going to be okay or whatever. Like they look at everything, they take a lot of pictures, they'll be building scans of both organizations, we'll make 3D models of the schools. And all this is planning through us and through the schools. We sort of assist with getting that set up with the schools just because we don't want to leave a big burden with the school to just manage. I have a feeling all of these folks are going to be so professional on it, we probably don't even have to be there, but it will help. I think it will make things a little more seamless if Mr. Pratt and Ms. Mullen talk to us, rather than just a bunch of people they don't know.

I think it will make it way more clear for them. So, data gathering, stuff in the building, listening sessions with the staff. Both schools will do a meeting with the staff in November. and we've got firm dates for one firm and this week we'll have firm dates for the other and the windows will be pretty pretty close some of them I doubt we'll do anything on the same night but we might do some things during the same week staff meetings are probably going to be the first one will be in person now remember with collective bargaining and FCPS we can't require anyone to be there we would just throw it out and say if you're interested you want to join us come and if you don't you don't have to and the information is going to be there

Do the staff meetings in person and it's really just listening. What are things that are troublesome, worrisome, things that we need to address, things that you love and you don't want to lose when we renovate, all those things that as a teacher, I went through one of these processes when I was teaching sixth grade very early on and it's the same thing. It gave us a chance to talk about what was important to us and as people who run the building you want that. And then also a community meeting. Community meetings we're going to start online. eventually there'll be things that you want to look at maybe touch and those will be in person but to start with now we want to be accommodating the folks

who have kids and it might make things easier to be able to listen to it online so we'll see how that goes and we're kind of entitled to either in both as we go through the process with both firms that kind of leave it up to us let me see if there's anything else on there it's kind of the same thing all the way down the list and and I this answer asked your question though I think I'm one more thing. Sure. Maybe I can't say that. With

Kristina Cecerethe staff listening intro session, is there another opportunity beyond it, in person, just so they can get feedback?

Dan PhillipsstaffYou know, really, honestly, when I was teaching, we gave information. We snuck over and saw what was happening and gave information then. So kind of throughout the process, they're going to be listening. And they'll also revisit things. And this is just like you'd imagine. It's almost like doing a draft of a paper where they'll gather a bunch of information and they'll go back and write it and everyone will say, no, that's not what we meant. We wanted this, you know, and they'll have a chance to. And also our staff is part of our community, so they're welcome to come to any of these meetings at any time. You know, we welcome and appreciate their input. And just for clarity, I think I'm going to talk about like the staffing needs

and the outside help needs in just a second. when I first started, just starting the facility conditions assessment, and there was a ton of times where I would coordinate just exactly what I just said, between the architecture firms and the engineering firms and so on with the school. Sometimes I would meet them over there and carry the key myself so that nobody in the building had to be pulled away. So there's a role for someone in our office and then there's also a role for someone who knows, who understands architectural drawings and permitting things like that and that's not necessarily the architects. This is somebody else. So the architects are going to protect us really well. It's also smart,

I'll talk about in a second, to have somebody else who's like monitoring the architecture stuff and the things that they're doing to make sure we're getting what we want. You know, just that there's no misunderstanding. Any other questions on that one or thoughts? Okay. And then one of the things that both teams ask both architecture teams ask us to do another verbiage is a little different but I have a feeling we'll either stick with what they normally use or what was merge and use one that the spirit of these is kind of the same on both teams so they're asking us to create three teams and this is very similar to the work that we were planning to do and we did when we did the bond referendum where we gathered some people together who had a high level of

interest and wanted to be involved in the process. And so the integrated design team slash owner review team, depending on which firm you're talking with, this is the group that really gets into the details of the design team. It's the first line of decision-making, reviewing environmental standards, lead certification systems, milestone documents. We're going to be regularly with this team and people will drop in and drop out. Like sometimes, I mean, in a minute I'm refer to like my little experience with concession stand and stuff like that I think it's there are times when we want someone to be able to translate what you all want what our community wants back to the firm there are times when they're

gonna say I'm trying to get in touch with somebody in the city that I don't need to talk to and then I'll call and find that out for them like those not necessarily just me but someone in our office so superintendent assistant superintendent someone from FCPS facilities and we have someone who's willing and I'm working with FCPS right now just for clarity in fact remind me back to that in just a second. Someone from the project management team which I'll talk about again in a second. We'll invite principals sometimes, there'll be a city engineer with us sometimes. We could even invite a city council person or a school board person or city manager just depending on the event and what they're talking about that particular deck. I think the FCPS thing, we have one little

pickup and it's almost like a blessing that it happened at this point where one One of the architecture teams asked for some documentation from FCPS and the FCPS response was we're not making this project. It wasn't a snide response, it was just like this isn't our project, it's somebody else's. So this gave us a really good opportunity to solve the problem now of what is this going to look like for the next four years because if the SSA stays intact, FCPS will pick up a lot of the maintenance on the things that we put in and we don't want to put in a system that they will maintain. And so for both of us, this is a great example of how the SSA would function correctly. Let's talk about it now so that it works for everybody 20 years from now.

And so we're working through that piece of it. And I had a great conversation with the person in FCPS and I'm kind of waiting for a response. I know we'll talk again soon and I think it's going to end in the right place. And I'll keep you posted on that, obviously. So that's one team. The second team, when I was a teacher, I was on this at our school, the steering committee. Key stakeholders and decision makers to set big picture goals and directions for projects. We'll meet the strategic intervals more often during design and less during the later construction phases. This is a number of school board members, whatever you all decide is fitting. Superintendent, assistant superintendent, again somebody from facilities, somebody from

project management. And then for certain meetings, principals, engineers, PTA leaders, community members, city leadership representatives. And really anybody else you deem important to be on the team. talked about having someone on the team to help us look at the financial to make sure we're you know our goal is always going to be responsible stewards of the public's money but to make sure that we're doing that and somebody it might be good to have somebody who's objective who's not on the who's not looking for the faucet design to think about that piece you know so somebody who might play that role that's the steering committee again more early and And then the final team is really, this is the public team.

This is where members of our community, parents, students, coaches, anybody else who might want to be part of this could join us. Basically open to the public. We publish information that's shared with this team for everybody to see. All interested parties, including the steering committee are involved in this. We'll gather feedback from this group about experiences, hopes, likes, dreams, etc. They'll also get the opportunity to look at designs, refine the design along the way, and of course the steering committee would review materials before they are released to the public. And it's all public information. The steering committee kind of helps steer us in the right direction and make sure that again we're being responsible with money and all those

things and thoughtful. This group gets to dream big and you know kind of just think about what we want as a community. So that's, those are the three team so that's kind of like it's up to us over the next month and a half or so I think Barb did I get a goal late December for that or January one somewhere in that ballpark of kind of having the composition of these teams in place and so this is and just like the bond referendum we need to get a list of names together talk about it think about who's interested in who we might want to recruit reach out to those people and recruit them see if they're willing to do it make sure they understand the commitment and then kind of go from there and so one last thing and then to your questions so I love these old pictures so much and I want to

share with you one more time so at one point in our community there were parents who sent their kids to these four schools so if you've not seen them before Leighton Hall in the upper left corner quarter became Daniels Ron, Westmore consolidated with Germantown below it to become Providence, and then Green Acres joined the Lake Hall community to become Daniels Ron. And you know like at one point, I don't know why I get emotional about stuff like this, people got up every morning, they sent their kids to these schools, and it was like important to them. And then one day we said we're not gonna have those places anymore, we need to make something good for them. And we did, you know, and so when we think about like, you know, you know what we got.

So, um, well, I've seen this before, though. It's not a surprise to her. I didn't bring the tissue. Yeah, I know.

Sarah KelseyI'm

Dan Phillipsstaffjust talking

Sarah Kelseyto

Dan Phillipsstaffyou now.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceDean, you should have started with, like, you didn't, you should have, you couldn't have started with the closing of John C. Wood and Fairback Elementary. Fairback Elementary. I worked at John C. Wood. I was like saying, like, there were

Dan Phillipsstaffsix schools. Yeah, there were. There were. I've got pictures of them. I'll share another time, too. But what I think is, like, what's important is us getting it right. You know what I mean? And we need to, for our kids, and for 30 years from now, there'll be another group of people who sit around a table like this and decide to undo what we did or go to the new thing or tear them down. You know what I mean? And there's a lot of beauty in that. So, like, there's an honor in being involved in this, and it's going to be a challenge. And some days they're going to be mad at each other about things like that. But in the end, if we get what we got last time, we'll be really satisfied. So, you know, I'm in, and we'll have other good people who are in also.

So I think I do want to say this, and it's going to seem self-serving, but it's not in some ways. I do want us to think about, or I encourage you all to think about, the staffing needs to get this done. So there are communications needs that are going to come in the next year, and there are going to be staffing needs for all those coordinations and things that need to happen. I think that, like in my opinion, as somebody who's worked in the office, and knowing, like, we want to keep up the good things we do every day in this city. I think having a full-time superintendent a full-time assistant superintendent even if the current status with both of those and then the full-time communications person I'm gonna especially through these first couple of

phases because they're gonna be a lot of meetings there's gonna be a lot of information we don't want misinformation we want to make sure everybody's included and feels a part of it I think those are considerations when we did the budget originally for this there was a three oh okay and we're talking about project management side in a second so that that part would be on us to figure out or to ask for funding and it's not a substantial amount of money it's not a lot more than we're already doing right now the other part is the project management piece and that's where the people who know how to leave plans comes in and know how to fill out permits and all that we built in a 3% cost into the budget so it's already included as a line item to have a project manager and

And so when we did the concession stand, my little tiny example, and other people can speak to this a lot more wisely than I can, that FCPS had a project manager on site every day to make sure that the concrete block we bought was the one we got. You know, like those kind of things. And the drain went where it was supposed to go. And the people coming from permitting did come and sign off before they covered in concrete. Those kind of things. And so that's another thing we need to think about probably pretty soon. hiring a firm of some kind or making a decision to fill that role with somebody who knows what they're talking about. You know, I think many of us were trained as teachers and educators,

and I think we need somebody who also understands facilities and construction, and probably the opposite of the steering committee. Less in the beginning and more when we get on the ground, when we start digging stuff up. We definitely don't want to be looking at that to figure it out or whoever our new superintendent is, Maybe we have somebody who has that role. All right, so I leave it for questions and thoughts.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceAnd I would caution that when we went through bigger renovations back in late 90s, 2000, that we had only a part-time superintendent who was made full-time. During that time. Just for that time, and then they hired an assistant to the superintendent. was made so I do not I'm just not saying I don't think it's not valuable but now we have a full-time assistant superintendent and a full-time superintendent I don't know it'll be difficult to justify having we're gonna have to it's gonna have to be a conversation like how to approach that because having and I'm not saying we shouldn't have a consultant or some sort of management company because that would be the smartest thing to do. And

Dan Phillipsstaffthey do have people that were on site during that time. Yes

Carolyn Pitchesby voicebut I think I will check with Janice because I had spoken to her about this before I don't think that that I think that some of that was done through

Dan PhillipsstaffWell, we were paying them to be the building managers at that point. Yes, I think so. The defense county's fee to do that is 9%. Yeah. So the project manager, and that's the way that I understand it. Yeah, so we would need

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceto have, my point is

Dan Phillipsstaffthis,

Carolyn Pitchesby voicewe just need to have our ducks in a

Dan Phillipsstaffrow. 100%.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceAnd in terms of communication, again, you know, there's only so much money in the city budget. and likely what I think would happen was they would say that they think we could use their communications and I'd be weary of that as well because I don't want them to eliminate our communications person so I'm just playing devil's advocate like we've got to think

Dan Phillipsstaffto you know what I mean that's why I said it's my recommendation of my friend I think the the difference between what we have now in full time is ten hours. But it's

Carolyn Pitchesby voicebenefits. The city doesn't really care about the hours, I will tell you. I've had many fights with them. I mean, even when it came to your contract, it was, you know, it's the benefits. They don't, benefits costs, that's the majority of the costs. It's not, they're not, as JC said to me, I'm not worried about salaries, you know. So.

Dan PhillipsstaffFair enough. It's true. I just think, I think my point is, well, we ran into this with the bond referendum. We just need to

Carolyn Pitchesby voicetread lightly, not ask for all these things all at once.

Dan PhillipsstaffAgreed. And I think the reason I'm bringing it up now is so we're thinking about it in advance and not deciding in real time, like we need somebody right now. Now's the time to think

Lauren Bartelmeby voiceabout

Dan Phillipsstaffit. But we

Lauren Bartelmeby voicedo need to think about it.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceWe start needing to lay the breadcrumbs. Like, hey, this is how they did it in the past. I mean, you had a question.

Amit HickmanWith your recommendation, would it be one person on both sites? They would just go back and forth between the two? The

Dan Phillipsstaffproject manager, the 3% is built into both figures. So it would probably, I mean, we'll have to decide that also. Like in the beginning, I thought we'd want, when Laura and I were on this team together, I thought we'd want one architecture firm to do both buildings. And when we got in there, it sort of made sense to me to have two dedicated teams. You could theoretically have two different companies. company that has two different teams or one company that has one team that's both. I think that's probably when we look at those project manager firms. But it's not like two

Amit Hickmanfull-time people.

Dan PhillipsstaffNo, no, no. The project manager thing wouldn't be full-time. In the beginning, it might not even be much at all. It's just consulting kind of. And then eventually, the way that I saw the folks, and again, small potatoes, when you're at the concession stand, the FCPS guy was there pretty much every time I drove by. So I think he was on site all the time, but I don't know how that works in real time. Because there are a bunch of bosses, I'm sure, when you start thinking about plumbing work, mechanical work, you know what I mean? Those kind of things. And I don't understand it well enough to know. I

Lauren Bartelmeby voicewould just add for the context of that meeting, just since I was in it too. I'm sorry, I hate to say that. I'm sorry. Because Sarah's next.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceThat's my husband. I'm sorry. We're going to get to everybody,

Sarah KelseyI promise. Okay, Sarah, Ms. Kelsey. Are we talking also a person who is not a part of the current firms? We're talking a different firm altogether. Different firm, a

Dan Phillipsstaffproject manager firm. And the procurement office in Fairfax City, it's a standard thing. It's obviously not surprising when you think about it because it makes sense. I didn't know that was a thing, but it is. but the procurement office gave us a list of firms that are already vetted by the state to do things like this. Yeah, I was just

Sarah Kelseymaking

Dan Phillipsstaffsure it was not somebody who's different outside. It's almost like that third voice. We're partners together. We trust each other and have faith in each other, but this other guy's going to check us both here to make sure it's right. Gotcha. Thank you.

Kristina CecereJust two clarifying points. So anybody we do hire to be a project manager would not be a full-time staff member. It's a consultant. And so we're not dealing with benefits or retirement. No,

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceI was talking about Gary's contract. Because Gary's contract has been brought up, I brought it up at least twice before. Gotcha.

Kristina CecereAnd so the cost of this project manager would likely begin and then escalate from around fiscal year 28? I think,

Dan Phillipsstaffwell,

Kristina CecereI think. And then going up to 2030? Is that?

Dan PhillipsstaffI think they're involved. We, when Mr. Platteberg was here, we actually, interview's not the right word, we met with And kind of the idea is we would use them hourly now. Okay. And then as we get closer, I mean, I think the thing, like the need would drive that part of it. And I think we'd probably, I mean, like the architecture firms know that this would help them also. So I think they'd give us good guidance on now's the time we need these people. You know what I mean? They've mentioned it. They've mentioned it when we're having our meetings as well. because they do wonderfully working with people like us, with educators and people who serve the community in this way, but they also want someone to double-check things and make sure they're right.

So this helps everybody, and it's part of their kind of language also.

Kristina CecereMay I ask a follow-up? Mm-hmm. So 3% is at the projected cost by the end of the time, or is it an average across?

Dan Phillipsstaff3% of hard costs from the total hard cost number. Gotcha, okay. Okay. It's borrowed money.

Lauren Bartelmeby voiceI was just going to add just a little, because I feel like when we were in those meetings, the people in the meetings from FCPS were making it clear that like FCPS is just big enough that they have those, like they have many people who have that job full time and the city does not. Yeah. And so if we didn't hire those people, we just would not have what

Dan Phillipsstaffwe should have. And just by way of example, so for the concession stand in the press box, our partners at FCPS, like the first call they made to us was like, what sort of project manager do you want me to be? Do you want me to make sure that I'm on top of this every minute of the day, or do you want something that's more conciliatory? And then they did what we asked. I said, like, I want you to be nice to everybody, and I want you to make sure we're doing what we're supposed to do. And they did. You know, that's kind of the way it worked out. But they were incredible partners. And so if there was ever a dispute, like, you know, little things come up where there's a dispute between other firms.

Somebody ran the wire to here and somebody else was supposed to pick it up and it didn't get to where they managed it. They took care of all of it. I think there was another point I want to make from what you asked. But yeah, I think, oh, the other example is like the scoreboard. There wasn't a lot of management of that. We did it. We did it in-house with the procurement team here in Fairfax City, and we probably got a better price because of it. But they came in, they painted the posts, and then they put the big TV screen up, and then they left. It was over. And honestly, FCPS helped us a little bit anyway with the electrical part during that without the project management. Because they're big partners.

Sarah KelseyWhat? Can I do a good one? Yeah, let's go. I know you said it's in each contract or

Dan Phillipsstaffeach. It's just

Sarah Kelseylike getting that

Dan Phillipsstafftotal number.

Sarah KelseySince they are technically two separate, can you combine it to make one if we ended up finding somebody but they cost more than 3%,

Dan Phillipsstaffyou know, or whatever? Well, the 3% would have to, like, we, I don't, that's probably a more technical question than I'm ready to answer right now. Okay, that's funny. But what I would say is, like, there'll be some firms that are big enough that they could have two different teams. It's one firm, but two. Okay. there'll be other people like when we did I was surprised that the architecture firms weren't bidding on both schools but most of them didn't like they picked one or the other it made sense for them that's probably which was more popular which schools what did what school

Carolyn Pitchesby voicedo these

Dan Phillipsstaffpeople

Lauren Bartelmeby voiceDaniel Daniels run really

Carolyn Pitchesby voicesite for doing I

Lauren Bartelmeby voicewonder why I think they thought they had to be more innovative like they can work with

Dan Phillipsstaffit's an unusual building to anything yeah it is and then Two and a half floors, which is sort of that, you know, Providence. That stairway that goes to nowhere. Yeah, it's that kind of thing. And, in fact, other people started, like, playing around with how they would address that.

Lauren Bartelmeby voiceAnd when they were, they gave, like, suggestions for different schools, and, like, everyone's, like, initial suggestions for Providence were the same. Yeah. So I think it was, like, Providence had, like, really obvious, like, this is the only thing that would make sense to do, whereas I think Daniel's running. Yeah.

Dan PhillipsstaffThey're going to have some more creativity. And as a Providence principal, it didn't hurt my feelings that we were good.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceThere's a couple of design faux pas, like KJ, how the

Dan Phillipsstaffupstairs doesn't

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceever connect.

Amit HickmanBut so does Daniel Strong. They have the same issue. And they have a

Carolyn Pitchesby voicestairway to nowhere and a bell that is for nothing.

Dan PhillipsstaffBut you know, those are all things that when those people were sitting around the table. Were they like, why the hell

Carolyn Pitchesby voicedo you have a bell that you can't

Dan Phillipsstaffring? The bell came at the very beginning. I know, wasn't it? It was like, why do you have

Carolyn Pitchesby voicea bell?

Dan PhillipsstaffWe need just a rope. That'll be for the next rope. We'll go back in time. Okay. That's it. Thank you. Do you want to do the CIP update? It won't take any time at all. It's two seconds. I'll pull this up just so you can see it. very quick. All I did was based on the questions and the questions from the meeting. Since these are numbers, I do want to

Kristina Ceceresee them

Dan Phillipsstaffbetter. There's those pictures

Sarah KelseyI love so much.

Dan PhillipsstaffI won't get choked up this time. The numbers will make me less emotional. All we did here is we added the HVAC back in. And just by way of explanation of that, I should have caught that when we did it originally. Typically, we had put around $600,000, a little over $600,000 in the years that I was here. Mr. Plattenberg had us go with that. Last year, he was able to cut it down to $313,000 and then estimated $313,000 again for FY27. Sorry,

Carolyn Pitchesby voicewhy would he do that? What is that

Dan Phillipsstaffbased on? Well, there's a surplus built up in the account. I was going to get there in just a second. No, but it's a great question. There's a surplus in the account right now. I think the big thing that with your question and talking to the finance office and just thinking it through, these out-year projections of the 3, I went with the 313 for the forthcoming years. The good news is those aren't dollars that we're voting on to approve right now. Those are estimates down the road. So if we get to FY28 and now we have over a million dollars in surplus, maybe we knock it down and we don't take anything for you. We might have, the big problem or the thing that came to mind for me with HVAC is it's such a critical system, and not that electrical and all that stuff isn't,

but you feel at the moment it doesn't work, and then safety gets involved very quickly and all that kind of stuff. So we don't want to be underprepared to address what needs to be. No,

Carolyn Pitchesby voicewhich is why I was like, where is the HVAC? I'm

Dan Phillipsstaffglad you brought it. Where is the HVAC? And honestly, like at one point when we were doing the process, I had thought about it and then I just lost it in the different slides. So thank you for bringing that up. The other two were confirming the estimates. And this is just important to hear. For the softball field, the $2,500,000 was the number we had before and is still accurate. So we're okay with that. now that 250, 2,500, 2.5 million is to put a new turf field over the current turf field. So a lot of the things stay in the same. In the softball field? Softball field. But it's not turf, it's grass. I'm sorry, it goes over the current grass field. Okay, okay. I was like, when did

Carolyn Pitchesby voicewe get turf?

Dan PhillipsstaffI don't remember. No, it's not turf, it's not turf. It's turfing the current grass field. Another option that was on the table is turning it around and using the current grass field in the back corner as a softball field. That's adjacent to

Carolyn Pitchesby voicethe baseball field.

Dan PhillipsstaffYeah, adjacent to the baseball field. It's an option and it might be interesting. Because the grass is

Carolyn Pitchesby voicedecent

Dan Phillipsstaffover there. That's the thing, brand new Bermuda grass. And it will help

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceus with issues with Country Club Hills in terms

Dan Phillipsstaffof... If we were to, there's a lot of infrastructure improvements that would be required if we were using it for this, and it probably gets closer to three and a half million. So it's about a million dollars more to turn it around and put it on grass. And then there's a Title IX question of having turf for the softball, baseball, and grass. And grass for the girls. Even though the grass in some ways could be superior to the turf, it's not the same. So it's something that we'd have to address and figure out if we decided that's what we want to do. about the turf fields at KJ, the proposals. There were some questions immediately after we finished the current baseball field. And so just if that comes up, just know that's kind of what we have to think about.

The same thing is true for the turf replacement on the football field. We had an estimate of $600,000. The current estimate, the updated estimate is around $750,000. I got one actually today that's like $730,000. So right around the same amount of money. well I updated it from 600 to 750 and that's for basically a new version of what we have now if we want to go to a different type of turf and you know there's there's you could gather information about whether or not there's a health risk and I think we it was asked and answered and discussed before but if that came up again there are other options but we'd have to find out like is it more healthy to use this other product that's new than it is the

one that we know about that kind of thing if we wanted to go to a grass field it would be well over a million dollars and then there's additional maintenance all the reasons that we didn't go yeah

Carolyn Pitchesby voicewe're not sorry I would never vote for a grass field on so long so

Dan Phillipsstaff750 and that is in FY 27 with the idea that if if it were approved we would probably be aiming to try to do it this summer and it sounds like it takes about a month to change over so we would go from July 5th we

Carolyn Pitchesby voicedid

Dan Phillipsstaffit last time the

Carolyn Pitchesby voicefunny thing is when we did last time that's how much it cost $750,000 yes and that was what ten years ago right

Dan Phillipsstaffwe're on the tenth year of this I understand it the tenth year of this

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceMs. Hickman.

Amit HickmanWould that have a huge impact on all sports?

Dan PhillipsstaffIt should be okay. If we did it through, I mean, practice and things like that, we still thankfully have. We've got a nice practice field that's not quite under yards and we've got a nice, big rest. It was fine last time.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceThat

Dan Phillipsstaffis

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceexactly what we did.

Dan PhillipsstaffA month made it work.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceYeah. We had the ribbon

Amit Hickmancutting and

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceit

Dan Phillipsstaffwas all good.

Amit HickmanSo maybe like over those blackout days, they have like at least two bits of blackout days anyway.

Dan PhillipsstaffYeah, and we have things that we can do. And I also think that just like with the baseball and softball field and practice field, at some point you just say, like, let's go in and do the project and then figure out what we need to do to make it work rather than let's just delay it for another year. Because you can keep punting down the field every year. You know, I'm not good at that.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceLast thing. Was my understanding that concrete and paving was going to be done by the city from now on? be in their operational budget.

Dan PhillipsstaffWell I don't know they're not this is all moving to operational everything on that top section but it's not the city doing it. It's still our separate budget and they're great partners also and just by way of example there's a paving paving slash paving project right now at the high school and the estimates that we got from FCPS were far less than using They were great at giving these names. I just

Carolyn Pitchesby voicedidn't, I thought we were taking

Dan Phillipsstaffit out of the CIP. Yeah, we are. This is almost for just like, remember this is what we've always done before, but when they actually do the work, that whole top section, all maintenance, is going to go over to operation. We'll all go to the operational. Yeah. Okay, so eventually

Carolyn Pitchesby voicewe won't even have a maintenance section

Dan Phillipsstaffof the CIP. Not on CIP. Next year we won't. Okay. We could theoretically take it out now, but this is just to help us through the transition. Okay. So we know that it didn't just go away, it's just moving.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceKelsey. So does that include the HVAC then? HVAC would be in that maintenance also.

Sarah KelseyOkay,

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceI just wanted to double check. Okay, Ms. Sessori.

Kristina CecereThat was my concern in that HVAC repair replacement right yes I'm just catching yes sorry no worries across all four schools yes it

Dan Phillipsstaffis yeah yeah it's a good question I

Kristina Ceceremean I feel like that might be more appropriate in the bottom section just because of how we need to structure that yeah the replacement piece is what's sticking out of me it's not a maintenance it's yeah placement

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceis different than repair so we have to make a determination and I don't know how the city is going to want to do that either you're going to use the end of useful life dates as then then it becomes a replacement and

Dan Phillipsstaffwe're already doing it to the four schools of the renovation right you know what I mean so like there's there's a lot of things that kind of work themselves out here to here which is also why those out years they could change we might come back and say no it's six hundred and twenty six again

Kristina CecereRemind me, when we do the high school roof, that HVAC, is that part of the repair?

Dan PhillipsstaffYeah, the ones that we recently replaced would stay, and somehow they magically lift them up. I guess the big trains would join us again. I think that's the thing with those things. They're not, you know, they're 25-year machines. And so if we had to replace one at Daniel Brown tomorrow, we'd just have to replace it. We'd have to go to school between now and then. But smart people know how to fix it so we don't have to throw it away. They'll raise it up and put it back down. I think with the high school it's interesting because of the whole puff roof situation too. And all this goes on while the things we talked about, the elementary school renovations, like you know the difference between those two big projects we just discussed

in the roof is there's no real design other than like the pieces that they used to build a roof. We won't be picking out colors and things like that.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceThey'll just be trying to figure out engineer wise like structurally what's wrong.

Dan PhillipsstaffAnd even schedule wise. Is there something wrong? Schedule wise too. Which part of the building can we do this summer versus next summer or spring break or whatever.

Kristina CecereJust one last comment. I think I'm leaning toward, especially thinking about some of the issues we're seeing with KJ and with Fairfax, the HVAC that happens. My gut would be considering moving into the school projects in the long term, just thinking about that. I do think that's...

Dan PhillipsstaffIt almost seems to me too, and I'm relatively new to this process, but the... So if we got to... There's enough money in there right now to buy a number of units if we had to buy them in the leftover, it's not leftover funds, but previously appropriated funds. Those will not go away even when this all moves back to operating. operating budget will go back each year but the money that's in there right now doesn't go away because it's appropriating these capital funds as I understand it. And I think the, what did you ask?

Kristina CecereOh, it was more, just,

Dan Phillipsstaffbecause I knew, yeah, money goes

Kristina Cecereback, like it's the operating costs that go back to the city. It is,

Dan Phillipsstaffbut it's already the CIP stays, so even though those line items will move to maintenance, now... there currently stays with us. And the 313 would not go into the existing fund, it would go back if we didn't use it. Which is really probably the rightful way to do it. But if we knew that there was going to be, like if we said Katherine Johnson has to have 10 new units, they would be CIP items for next year. Yeah, we

Carolyn Pitchesby voicelikely won't replace anything at Fairfax right

Dan Phillipsstaffbecause until the roof is done and just by way of example for that Mr. Blatberg was talking about at West Springfield High School when they did the renovation the air conditioning units were going out at the very very end as they were getting ready and they brought in like refrigerated trucks to run with air conditioners and they also didn't replace it until they were ready to replace it.

Kristina CecereOkay.

Dan PhillipsstaffSo it makes a lot of sense to wait if we can and again like the ongoing things that There's so many factors that the Katherine Johnson thing is way more complex than I'll ever be able to understand But it's old systems and new systems and inventing systems Just a bunch of things that have to work just right for it to be right everywhere in the building So sometimes where it's really good at one place now. It's gonna have to be hot in the other

Kristina CecereYeah, well

Dan Phillipsstaffit's something to fix eventually Yeah,

Kristina Cecereand having been in the classrooms there as a former teacher like it just I know how Fickle sometimes that HVAC can be in spring

Dan PhillipsstaffFickle's a good word

Kristina CecereI

Carolyn Pitchesby voicewould say that it might be nice to get the horizon report for Katherine Johnson just to see which units, how many are at the end of their useful life and the work order. Because we know, we have units that if the work orders are continual, that's a unit. But it's like the elevator at Katherine Johnson. That thing went, like we should have, it literally was in our CIP every year for 10 years. long past the end of its useful life, but it doesn't get used that much. So it didn't have any work orders really. It had like a couple of repairs. So eventually we were, you know, the school board said, it was to Peter, we were like, can you just take that out? Because every year it says $150,000 for this elevator that we never replace.

So we do have probably units that are at the end of their useful life, but they're functioning just fine. But a Horizon Report would sort of give us an idea.

Dan Phillipsstaffon that again already. Not just the Horizon Report but also the environmental management process. That's five years old I think at this time somewhere around that. We have CPS where systems that used to run all the time are now off for periods of time. It's causing some problems for us and the county has been really good at helping us. Instead of turning on at 6 a.m. they turn it on at 4 a.m. things like that that do help but they don't quite solve everything. Yeah, that's

Carolyn Pitchesby voicebeen a thing.

Dan PhillipsstaffIt saves money and it has the potential to cause issues.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceBecause there was a time where they weren't turning them on until literally right before school started and the building was hot and wouldn't cool down until 11 or 12. Especially Monday. Yeah,

Amit Hickmanevery Monday.

Carolyn Pitchesby voiceOh it was terrible. Real hot over the weekends. okay anybody else have any more questions okay anything okay I'll adjourn the meeting at 7 50 30 thank you

Lauren Bartelmeby voicethank you