School Facilities Meeting Minutes 3-16-05
Acton Agua Dulce Unified School District Facilities Committee draft Minutes -Meeting at ACTON SCHOOL TEACHER'S LOUNGE Wednesday, March 16, 2005 -7:00 p.m.
1.0 OPENING OF MEETING Members Present Ron Bird yes Charles Brink no Shauna Comber yes Cindy Gerlich yes Larry Layton yes Sheryl Puett yes Ken Wipff yes Max Duran yes School Board liason
2.0 COMMITTEE OPERATIONS Discussed that at the last meeting on March 9 the committee agreed to recommend to the Board that the new restrooms for Meadowlark and High Desert needs to be considered a separate issue from moving the portables from Acton to these campuses (4 for Meadowlark and 3 for High Desert).
The mission statement for this committee was clarified in that meeting to read:
To best serve our student population, we will act as representatives of the community to recommend to the Board solutions for the improvement of district facilities. We will first focus on current problems and possible corrections and then on long-term challenges.
In the March 16th meeting the following was discussed: We agree that we need to keep accurate, detailed and timely minutes of our meetings. We talked about that there is a willingness of many members of the community to assist the district in repairing and improving short-term facility needs with local volunteer labor. We will investigate what types of help can be contributed to the community without creating liability issues for the district (like falling off a ladder). Ken felt that we should evaluate the condition of our schools and try to get volunteers to help out.
We talked about the desire for the committee to avoid political issues. It was also stated that if the issue involves facilities it would be difficult for our committee to avoid the issue.
Max described how developer fees are being used and what they can be used for. They can be used for building facilities, making facility lease payments and paying off facility loans. Each year our district has $410K worth of facility loan payments (COP's) and $350K worth of relocatable building lease payments. Developer fees vary greatly from year to year. The budget estimates that each year we receive $500k in developer fees. We have in the past received as little as $300k in developer fees. Last year was our best year ever for developer fees and we took in almost $900k. The concern here is that with about $760k of facility expenses, there is not usually any money left over to accomplish real development with these fees. In recent memory some facility expenses have always encroached upon the general fund thus taking money away from running our academic programs. Max is going to ask the Board in include a Report section in each Board meeting for the Committees to report their status.
We discussed the need to visit the schools to assist us in determining immediate facility needs and to solicit input from each school regarding their needs. We decided that we would follow the following process to obtain input:
1. Shauna offered to and since has drafted a memo to each Principal to submit their list of immediate facility needs for their school (see attachment A). We are asking that each Principal return their list to us by April 8.
2. On April 16 the committee plans to visit each school and look a facility needs issues.
3. The committee will publish these lists as a vehicle to further solicit input from members of the public.
4. Invite members of the public to attend a future committee meeting that specifically will address the issues on this list. This public comment meeting will then assist the committee in the final step of
5. Consolidating the list and submitting the list with recommendations to the Board.
We discussed the historical enrollment decline that the district has been facing, talked about how housing developments that are underway or planned might or might not have an impact on the declining enrollment trend. The committee is looking forward to review the upcoming developer fee study the district is in the process of completing.
Max presented two letters (one from an architect and another from a structural engineer) regarding what they believe needs to be accomplished to make the Vasquez gym usable in the eyes of the Division of State Architect.
3.0 ADJOURNMENT Adjourned at 8:45 p.m.
Next meeting: March 23, 2005 at 7:00 PM at the Acton School Teacher's Lounge Agenda for the March 23, 2005 Meeting:
Approve agenda Approve prior meetings minutes Come up with a list of items that the committee should discuss in future meetings; take that list of items and prioritize the list.
Start going through this list of items in priority order.
Attachment A - Facility Wish List To: All AADUSD Principals CC: Dr. Wagner, AADUSD School Board From: The Facilities Committee (Board Sanctioned)
Re: Facility “Wish List” The Facilities Committee would like to solicit a “wish list” from each site principal to include what they perceive to be the areas of need at their particular school. The committee intends to make site visits on or about April 16, 2005 and request that these wish lists be submitted in writing to the district office by April 8, 2005. Please let us know what things you would like us to observe at your campus and where your immediate needs are. We suggest that you may want to consult your staff, site councils, parent organizations or other interested parties when compiling your lists. At this time we are focusing on short term needs and fixes but intend to deal with long term needs at a later date. The committee desires to coordinate district and community resources to address as many of the facility issues as possible.
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