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The
Need
The
Mill
Valley
School District’s five elementary schools and one middle school are a valuable and
vital public asset that play an integral role in supporting the excellent
educational programs our community expects.
Protecting
this public asset, ensuring that our schools and classrooms are safe and
preparing them to meet our future educational needs are among the
District’s primary responsibilities.
Taking
care of our schools, however, goes far beyond the routine and regular
maintenance and expense that keeps our schools clean and looking good day
in and day out.
Like
many homeowners who’ve added a room to accommodate a growing family or
replaced a cracked foundation, leaky roof, broken plumbing or faulty
electrical system that have simply reached the end of their useful life,
the District must also make major upgrades and repairs to our schools to
keep them safe and operating over many decades.
Unlike
remodeling or upgrading a home, however, the scale and cost of upgrading
six elementary and middle schools covering more than 315,000 square feet
of buildings on a total of 47 acres is much different and far more
complex.
And
unlike individual homeowners, the District is subject to many more
construction, safety and other state and federal building and
accessibility codes that introduce additional layers of complexity and
cost.
The
District must carefully plan to ensure that any work it does meets our
future educational and safety needs, is cost effective and will last for
many decades.
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The
Process
The
need for undertaking a major facilities upgrade first surfaced five years
ago, in 2004, when rising enrollment prompted the District to consider
adding a new kindergarten classroom at
Old
Mill
School
.
With
enrollment projected to continue rising in the coming years, the District
decided that it was time to look at its overall facilities needs, and plan
for the future.
The
majority of the District’s schools were built between 50 and 100 years
ago. Many of the major systems
that keep schools safe and running well – fire suppression, emergency
communications, plumbing, heating, electrical, roofing, windows, doors –
were reaching the end of their useful life.
The
District appointed a committee of parents, teachers, administrators and
community leaders to assess the District’s facilities needs, including
the condition of all schools, and develop a plan for how to meet those
needs.
From
2007 to 2009, the Facilities Master Plan
Committee (FMPC) working in close coordination with District
administrators and the Board of Trustees met dozens of times. The work
started with a set of guiding principles.
And later, the FMPC developed a set of funding
priorities to help guide future decision making about what work
would get done and in what order.
In
public meetings, through surveys, in consultation with a leading
construction management firm and in visits to each school and to other
school districts that had gone through a similar process, the FMPC
formulated a comprehensive plan to meet the District’s future facilities
needs.
The Facilities
Master Plan (FMP) outlined an expansive and thoughtful vision
for matching the quality of the District’s facilities with the high
quality of its educational programs and the community’s high
expectations for excellent schools.
Next, came the hard part: determining what work from the FMP the District
could afford, what should be done first and what would be the most
fiscally responsible and cost effective approach for getting it done.
Again, the District’s funding priorities
and educational needs helped guide the way.
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The
Plan
During
a series of public meetings in Spring and early Summer 2009, the FMPC and
Board of Trustees agreed on the initial list of projects that the District
should move forward with immediately. The Pre
Bond Implementation Plan did not focus simply on checking off
individual projects from the larger FMP, but reflected the most cost
effective and fiscally responsible approach for meeting the District’s
long-term facilities and educational needs.
A
major portion of the Pre Bond Implementation Plan, or Phase 1, identified
reconstructing much of
Edna
Maguire
Elementary School
. Reconstructing Edna Maguire would enable the District to accomplish a
number of important objectives:
-
Giving the District additional capacity at the largest
school site by acreage of any other elementary school in the District to
accommodate continuing enrollment growth and preserve small class sizes.
-
Replacing a school constructed using building and safety
codes that are no longer current, and that make continuing piecemeal
upgrades extremely costly and impractical to perform.
-
Minimizing the overall disruption to all schools and their
surrounding neighborhoods from major construction.
Phase
1 also includes important safety and modernization work at each of the
District’s five other elementary schools and middle school. Among the
critical work outlined in Phase 1 for the five other elementary schools
are:
-
Upgrading or replacing aging fire suppression and emergency
communications systems.
-
Replacing or repairing leaky roofs, windows and doors.
-
Repairing or replacing aging plumbing and electrical
systems.
-
Improving access for the disabled.
-
Upgrading outdated wiring and computer infrastructure.
The
total cost for Phase 1 is $59.8 million.
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Implementation
At
the same time the District was determining what work it would do, it was
also exploring the best way to pay for the work. Bonds offer school
districts and other public agencies the most cost effective way for
financing large facilities and infrastructure projects. Bonds help spread
out the cost over many years.
Timing
was also very important. The District’s capacity needs are immediate.
And delaying doing the work would increase the overall cost of Phase 1 as
construction costs go up. To determine community support for upgrading and
modernizing the District’s schools, the District conducted a survey that
showed there is sufficient voter support for moving ahead with Phase 1.
Armed
with that information and following the more than two-year public planning
process, the Board of Trustees unanimously approved on Aug. 5, 2009 a resolution
placing a measure on the November 3, 2009 ballot asking voters to
authorize a bond for $59.8 million. The
Marin
County
Registrar of Voters on Aug. 10 formally designated the measure as Measure
C.
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Accountability
As
careful stewards of the public asset for which the community has given
them responsibility, the Board of Trustees included a series of strict
accountability measures to ensure that the bond funding is spent according
to the plan. Among the accountability measures included in Measure C are:
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