001To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. To confirm that we have a legal meeting, may we have roll call for attendance? Yes. Mr. Michael Suggs, present. Dr. Woods, present. Dr. Mloud, [Music] Okay. Thank you. Mr. Johnson present and I'm present. We have five members present, none absent. With five members present, we have quorum and legal meeting. I'd like to go to item number two, the agenda. Um motion to approve the special agenda. So move. Is there a second? Second. Been moved and properly second. Any discussion on this agenda hearing? None. All in favor say I. I. Any oppose? Item number three, public comment. Uh, Mr. Johnson information. [Music] Pursuant to Indiana Code
0025-14-15-3, [Music] the Gary Community School Corporation Board of Trustees welcomes comments from the community. As a result, the agenda for each regular meeting provides time for public expression. The period of public expressions of three minutes per individual and 30 minutes total discussion of items on the agenda or to express concerns relative to the operation of the school city school board actions and other items of general educational interest. If there are many people wishing to address the board, we may limit the amount of time person may speak. Comments should be directed to the board, not to individual board members. Statement shall not be abusive or argumentative. Persons making comments shall not debate statements made by other persons. It shall not be permissible to orally present or discuss complaints against individual employees of the Gary community school
003board school corporation at any board of school trustees meetings. Issues relating personnel, individual circumstances or an individual school will be referred to building principal or an appropriate administrator in an attempt to resolve the issue prior to an appeal before the board. speaker cannot transfer their remaining time to another person. The board president will enforce these rules and may take actions necessary to maintain order at the meeting. Such actions may include but are not limited to interrupting the speaker if the statement is too lengthy, unduly repetitive or otherwise violates the rules. The president may terminate the address of any speaker who violates these rules or limit the total amount of time devoted to public comments if there's a large number of people wishing to address the board or if there's a large agenda about the business
004before the board. Thank you, sir. I am told that there's no one signed up for comments. I'd like to open to the floor if there's anyone in the room that would like to have comments before the board. [Music] No comments. So, let's move on to item number four, action items. 4.1, approval of the construction with the of construction of the restoration of Frankie Wood McCulla Elementary School. Good morning, Gary Community School Board members, Dr. Stokes, and community members. Thank you for joining us for this special board meeting. We're here today to seek your approval to move forward with selecting a general contractor for the restoration of Frankie McCulla Elementary School. As you know, March 19th, 2025, a tornado struck our community, causing significant damage to the schools of main gymnasium, including the roof, HVAC unit,
005and some structural elements. In response, the board approved a resolution declaring this an emergency project, allowing us to bypass the standard RFP process under Indiana Code 36-1-12-9 [Music] and 10. Following that approval, we moved swiftly but deliberately to ensure we adhere to all legal and fiscal responsibilities. In accordance with Indiana code, we solicited and received three competitive bids from construction companies, the Pangier Corporation, Power and Suns Construction, and Bergland Corporation. All three bids were comparable in cost and scope. After thorough evaluation, I respectfully recommend Power and Suns construction as the approved vendor as their proposed timeline allows us to complete the restoration more quickly than the other two vendors. In addition to the moisture exposure from the storm, as you will note in the environmental remediation uh picture here on the screen, we also obtained
006three quotes for the mold remediation, NES environmental, m environmental, and safe environmental. I am requesting for approval to proceed with safe environmental. their quote is aligned more with our budgetary needs and meets the necessary safety standards and compliance guidelines. Finally, I'd like to note that within your board materials, you will see we were able to secure a substantial discount on flooring for McCulla. We have an agreement with the state and um a procurement agreement with Sourcewell. It's an Indiana state approved procurement program. This partnership has meaningful cost savings to the overall project. Your support today will enable us to begin the critical work of restoring Frankie Mcola Elementary and bringing this essential facility back to 100% utilization. At this time, I'd like to open the floor for any questions. But before I do that, I
007would like to introduce a few key people in this entire process. Without them as the experts, I would not have been able to do any of this. First, I'd like to introduce Mr. Thomas from CSK Architects. He has developed the detailed scope, work, and accompanying blueprints for the project. Excuse me for one moment. Can they come up please so that all board members can see them? Sure. Then I would like to introduce Mr. Penny Smith who is our interim director of maintenance and grounds. And then I'd like to introduce Mr. Tim Irvin from Power and Suns Construction. I open the floor now for any questions from the board. First of all, I want to thank you for the work that you have done on this project. um you were able to keep me in step
008and I certainly uh concur with your decision to uh recommend uh these two vendors and um I just want to talk to the um the construction folk um in regards to this project. Is there anything unique and and I guess I would go with you sir from CSK. Um having to uh match and and and and work with a structure that's been up for decades. Um is there anything that we should be concerned concerned about or aware of? I I don't think so. I think it the building is solid as is. Um it's well constructed. Um the the the roof is dead flat, so we've taken taken that into account. We've also added some some allowances into the bid to repair electrical and to do some masonry work. So we should be in pretty good
009shape. It's a good solid building. Thank you. Uh Mr. Powers, in regards to um the project, the actual project, uh coming from a uh industry in my previous life, safety has always been number one issue for me and just the complexity of that project seems that safety could be a risk. Um are you comfortable knowing that we can get this done on time under budget and safe? Uh yes sir. Um obviously this helps that school students in the building for the summer. So most of the actually 95% of the work will be done while students are out of out of school. So that's going to help. And then obviously uh we we have trained professionals that know how to use lift and how to be and we have a superintendent on site daily and they
010also we do safety talks every day with our subcontractors and anyone who would visit the site would also have to go through a safety orientation to be in the in the in the space. Yes. Thank you. board president, if I might, um, how will you keep us a breast of things that are going on, meaning me, the superintendent, and of course, Kenny right there. Will you be working through Kenny on our behalf, or will you be working directly with Mrs. Zabarowski or myself? We we can work with all three of you. We um we could we use a system called Procore to actually manage our project. to have daily blogs in which you can give access to you to Miss Linda as well as Kenny where they can it's online where you can see daily
011photos you can see daily reports of what's what the progress has been made and then we also like to have weekly meetings with the architects and Kenny so we can keep everyone aggressive progress that that has been made so we do have weekly meetings and we will plan to have weekly meetings as well and that could be virtual site how all we do. And I do need to add one more person. Um, our building principal or assistant principal, I understand our building assistant principal is here. So, we would like to keep them as part of that move. Also, as part of this process, I'd like to add that we hired an environmental consultant to deal with the mole. So, the process will be they're going to go in there and treat the mold and kill
012it before anybody else gets in there, before these guys get in there. That's what the environmental remediation part is. And then then it's safe for the workers to be in that space. I mean, it's terrible in there. It's it's riddled with mold. So So we've taken care of that as well. Are we are we for sure that the mold is a result of the storm? Yes. Did we the scope as far as where did we test? Do we think we've got um it isolated? We know exactly where the entire the entire roof structure is covered in mold and we suspect that it's gotten into the duct work because the spores just fly around in the room. So that's why we hired this environmental consultant. Um we're going to treat the duck work and all the
013surfaces. The water infiltration is what caused the mold and there's food in there. So and it's dark. So that's the three ingredients you need from black mold. You can see it. It's evident everywhere. You have the plywood that was temporarily put in there on the old form deck for the gypson roof deck. It's it's brittle. And the steel joints have mold on it as well. And once you remove the mold, um you have the location that you're going to take the contaminated materials. Well, it it will be killed and then it'll be just dumped into the dumpsters. Like once it's killed, you're you're safe. Okay. They're going to treat it, kill it, and then you're you're good to remove it. Thank you. What What is the project timeline? Um, well, so there's two things. First,
014the big issue is the RTU, the rooftop unit. The lead time on that is about 15 weeks after this get approved. So, one of the things we want to do right away is to get this middle approved so we can order RTU. Uh so that's the big that's the that's the the big lead time. Everything else will be done by August 1st. Uh in terms of just preparing the rewards in the gym and things like that. So that will that can be done before the school school year starts. Unfortunately the the RTU is this is a 15 week approximately 15 week um lead time and we won't be able to confirm that date though until we get approval from you all and we can move forward so we can get it once get it ordered.
015So will school be able to start even though you all are still under construction? Well, yes. Well, all we have to do is come back and install the RTU. Okay. So, they won't that we won't have any option. We won't have any heat in the gym because the rooftop unit won't be here yet. So, probably cooling. Yeah. I mean, I said heat, but cooling. Yeah. If if I'm fortunate that we can't control the me time of the rooftop, that's the only issue. I get that. Did I help you out? Any additional questions from the board? See no questions. I will entertain a motion for approval. Some moved. It's been moved and properly second. Any discussion on the motion? May we have roll call for approval, please? Yes. Dr. Woods, yes. Dr. Mloud, yes. Mr. Johnson,
016yes. Mr. Suggs, yes. And I say yes. The vote is 5 to zero. With a vote of five in favor and zero against, the motion to hire um Power and Sons and CSK which already on and the safe environmental safe environmental has been approved. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you gentlemen. [Music] from board members. [Music] No comments. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So move second. Been moved and properly second. All in favor say I. I. Meeting is thank you for your attendance. [Music] Take the one.