It didn’t take long for the Unionville-Chadds Ford. School Board directors to start talking about the middle school project. Superintendent of Schools Tim Hofman brought up the subject during his Superintendent’s Report.
“There are a lot of questions and a lot of discussion points that I think are important for people to have the opportunity to talk about and weigh in on or to consider as we move forward tonight,” Hoffman said.
In his opening remarks, Hoffman said that there have been some changes since the last board meeting in March, specifically saying that Breslin Architects was told to stop work on the design.
He said he wanted to have a structured conversation that he would facilitate. Within that conversation, five points would be covered: Act 34, having a construction manager for the project, the reason for replacing the school with a new one, why the project was split into three projects, and the possibility of a referendum.
Hoffman said the board was presented in March with a plan that would allow for “affordability under the Act 1 Index.” That plan broke the project into three parts.
As for Act 34, the state website says, “An Act 34 construction project requires a referendum if the Maximum Building Construction Cost exceeds the Aggregate Building Expenditure Standard. The Aggregate Building Expenditure Standard equals the project’s Act 34 Building Capacity times the applicable Per Pupil Cost Limit. The Per Pupil Cost Limits are adjusted each fiscal year using the Building Cost Index History data published by Engineering News Record.”
Some of the concerns the community has expressed, Hoffman said, are that the current plan could lead to an Act 34 issue later, for two reasons.
“First is room utilization. Act 34 calculations are based on instructional versus non-instructional space…If your MBCC exceeds your ABES, at that point in the process, if the MBCC exceeds the ABES, then you have to either redesign or you have to go out to referendum,” Hoffman said.
Some people in the community, he said, feel there are more non-instructional rooms ae more than instructional rooms.
“For example,” he said, “is considered a teacher’s lounge or a small group instructional space? One counts against Act 34 numbers, and one doesn’t.”
Secondly, he said, “Act 34 requires escalation and contingency to be built into the final determination. Some people in the community feel that these numbers are being ignored…and that the design, as it stands now, is currently non-compliant with Act 34.”
Hoffman said he’s checked with the district’s solicitor, who said there’s been no violation, but that the district should re-engage with Breslin to express those concerns. He added that Breslin should be held accountable for Act 34 compliance.
Director of Facilities James Whitesel added that the district has had some recent discussions with the architects and other school districts regarding the calculations and noted that some rooms change use over the course of years.
“Currently, at Patton, I can identify at least five rooms now that were listed as teacher work room, a team room, a copy room when the building was [most]recently redesigned and added onto in 1998, and those spaces are all now instruction optional spaces,” Whitesel said.
The next point of discussion was the possible addition of a construction manager/owner’s representative.
“The current plan is to bring on a construction manager as advisor, or CMA,” Hoffman said, “once the decision is made to go forward with the design process. That’s the plan.”
He said that it is common practice in school construction and confirmed with the Chester County CCIU that to be standard practice. Hoffman raised the question of what a construction manager could do.
Whitesel followed up on that, saying the CMA would work with the district and the architect during the design phases, during the construction document phase, and continue with construction oversight.
Whitesel said the construction manager advisor would typically be involved with construction estimating and building reviews and recommendations, plus several other functions.
“The process of hiring a CMA is like other professional services. We’ll issue an RFP, then review proposals from the various CMAs, and provide a recommendation to the board,” he said.
Whitesel added that such a process would take about two to three months. He added that “it’s important to understand that the CMA works collaboratively with the owner and the architect, and it’s important to go through that process as a team.”
He also added that the design process is currently only about 20 percent complete.
Several directors, Erin Talbert, Jody Allen, and Rashi Akki, expressed being in favor of hiring a CMA.
Hoffman then moved the discussion to the reason for choosing to replace CF Patton instead of renovating.
“In short,” he said, “the building will not meet the needs of our students in the long term, and the cost of a significant renovation, according to the feasibility study were nearly as much as new construction. Additionally, the educational program of the students and staff during a multi-year renovation would severely impact the educational program.”
He added that the core of the building has never been updated or renovated since it was built in 1972.
Whitesel said a renovation is feasible, but the district would have to set up 20 temporary classrooms for three or four years and have each grade in those portable classrooms for a year at a time as portions of the school are renovated.
At the prodding of Jody Allen, Director Joe Everett, whose background is in commercial construction, said there are too many unknowns when dealing with a renovation, especially working in close proximity to students.
“As Mr. Whitesel said, it’s a much harder path to take,” Everett said. I couldn’t consciously sit here and say that we’d be able to provide the end product that the school district is looking for.”
The conversation then moved to the possibility of a referendum. With that, Hoffman brought in Finance Director Joe Deady to comment.
“When working through a very preliminary estimate for what a financing plan might look like with a successful referendum,” Deady said, “it should be possible to put together a financing plan that would average about one percent above the most recent Act 1 Index. A one percent increase would generate about $835,000 in additional revenue above the index.”
He thinks they can come up with a plan that would take the current debt service of $10,000,000 and increase it by about $1.2 million. A successful referendum would allow the district to go beyond the Act 1 Index before the 2031 debt service drop off, he said.
He added that the one percent tax increase would amount to about $85, but added after a question from Director Brian Schartz, that the $85 bump would occur for several years. The first-year increase would be $85, the second year would be $170, and year three would be $255. That could be for four or five years, Deady said as part of the conversation with Schartz.
The final topic concerned the reason for separating the project into three individual projects, including traffic flow design and moving the tennis courts, then moving the baseball field, and then the final phase, the construction of the new middle school.
Hoffman posed the question of whether they can or should be separate, or whether they can be lumped together into one. It was Whitesel who responded.
“I would say that the challenge we have is designing them as one project,” Whitesel said.
But, Whitesel said, the district could design that as one project, avoiding the need to file three separate land development and stormwater management projects, which could become very expensive. So, he said, the recommendation is to design it as one plan and build it in phases.
The board will have a week to digest what was said, then discuss the matter more when they meet on April 20.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
