001Take roll call. AIF here. Hulk. Gorman here. Here. Bulby. Watson here. Hemp here. All right. I need a request a motion. A sec. Uh motion is approve the consent agenda. So move second. Voice vote. All in favor. All in favor. All right. We have no public comment. And so now we'll go to you Dan to introduce the two architects that we'll have tonight. So we have two firms presenting tonight. 15 minute presentation Q&A. Right after that from FGM will be first. My name is Tim Woods. I'm a principal and board member of FGM Architects. We are extremely excited to be here this evening to be included in your architectural selection process. I'd be the principal in charge for FGMA and lead the master planning programming and referenda support services. My background in PK12 now surpasses
00240 years. unfortunately. Um, and I'm an accredited learning environment planner from the Association for Learning Environments and was recently named a fellow in that organization this past fall. The rest of the team that we have here this evening is includes Troy Kerr will be our project manager and your day-to-day contact for the project. Mike Dens who will lead design efforts and Neesma Humura who will be the project architect for projects. Brian Ogle who is the technical architect um the senior technical architect for the project was unable to be here this evening because of a prior commitment. Um we are extremely passionate about the work that we do for school districts and clients and the positive impact we can have on students, faculty and administrators. You could say you're getting the A team with us. We
003could team, we would team with your preferred civil and mechanical uh engineers. I'm Maggie Ericson um as well as McCcluskey Engineering. All of those firms are firms that we have had extensive experience with. Um we recommend a district has a referendum consultant to deal with PR, do community surveys and all those kinds of things as we find that it's very self-serving appearing to have an architect lead that process. um quickly reviewing our agenda for this evening. We're going to tell you a little bit about us. Then we're going to tell you a little bit about what we understand about your context. And then we'll talk about a master planning and referendum process that we think is transparent and can help build trust with your community. And finally, we'll talk about our approach to actually taking
004a project from its vision to its final completion um and open it up for questions and answers. FGM been around for a while when we've grown quite big, but all of this team serves you out of our uh office in Westchester, Illinois. And two of our clients are Geneva to the east and Sycamore to the west. So we in this area all the time and um proud of working with those clients. Been with both of those clients for 20 plus years now. Um again a larger firm so we have the capability to stretch to take on a lot of stuff but this team would be very focused on your work. Um, we also work with districts large and small. Approximately 100 plus PK-12 clients. 76 of those are in Illinois and 20 plus of those
005are in northeast Illinois. Many of our clients are in southern Illinois, not served by our office here, but served by our St. Louis area offices. Um, we and again we work with districts large and small, urban and rural, and have a great understanding of the differences in those communities. Mike, why don't you describe some of our recent design work? Hi everyone. Um, we wanted to share one slide with you just recent projects that we've done knowing that you are all unit district as well. So these are examples of some PK through through 12 grades here and you know we know one of your goals as a as a district is to create a community and support a community that is about connection and belonging. So inclusivity and we're huge believers with the architecture that we
006do and designing of learning environments that that that is an opportunity to design a space that can truly support that. And these are just a few examples here that include different strategies to help promote that uh that sense of belonging through the architecture and the learning environments. Um, you could see examples here of uh in the center there with the glass windows is a high school steam lab where you're introducing transparency and you're putting learning on display for all to see. And it really starts to break down the walls of the school and um get away from that institutional feel and really have that that connection visually. Um, of course there's, you know, there's concerns there with safety and security and there's many different strategies that we could put in place to help mitigate that
007and and be sensitive to that. Make sure that students and teachers they're we're easing their anxieties too because you want to you you want to be relaxed to really focus and learn. Um few other strategies here too is uh also thinking about neurodiverse students and understanding that a lot of students they they learn differently and that's okay and there's nothing wrong with that and designing spaces that truly support that you want to have flexible spaces so variety of furniture. If a kid needs to fidget in a chair they're able to have that type of chair to fidget and be able to focus and self-regulate themselves. Um, other examples too are just flexible spaces, different scale spaces. Kids that want to be part of a larger group, they're sitting off to the back, maybe in a
008little nook area like you can see on some of these photos here. But just really bringing in that that variety into the learning environment is very important. Troy will speak next. But so more important than what we've done is what we could do with you. And we understand that part of this process, a critical part of this process in supporting your goals is to reestablish trust with your community as Jim mentioned earlier. And we think that we can do that best through a process of master planning and referendum support. So typically we split this up into five steps. Uh it starts at the beginning with research, getting to know you, to know your district, to know the stakeholders that you serve and the students and staff that work in your schools every day. And it
009ends with a decision that everybody can support. But the part in the middle is the important part, those three steps in the middle. That's the community engagement part. And that's the part where we will meet with all of your different stakeholders, again, staff, students, administrators, community members to determine what their needs and desires are and how they feel that your facilities can best serve your community. We think that a good master plan is made up of three different components that it focuses on. Number one is the infrastructure. That's the obvious part, right? the buildings that serve your students and your community. But the second part is educational adequacy, how they do that. And Michael will touch on that again in a couple of minutes. And the third part of that master plan is again that
010critical piece of district and community engagement. Making sure that your community feels heard and that they feel like what you're planning on doing supports what they envision for the community in which they live. So, we like to think of all of these items up on the screen here as the prime ingredients that go into making a high quality learning environment. Um, and we're always bringing these into the conversations with teachers, with the community, both understanding what's currently working well in their classrooms and learning environments today. And as we prepare for the future, how should we address those future needs? all thinking about these ingredients at the same time and making them part of the conversation. Um size, for example, is a huge one. You know, ensuring that we're not overbuilding or underbuilding. We understand that,
011you know, construction has a square footage cost and we want to be mindful of that. And our approach is to with size, we're always benchmarking to various state standards, including ISBY with square foot per student for different types of learning spaces as well as other Midwestern states as well. um that really helps us kind of hone in on on what's the right fit for your district. But also, you know, a few other things here too. Um a lot of these elements are based in evidence-based design. You know, for example, views and natural light. We all know that has a huge impact on the learning environment and improves test scores and those are things that we're continually discussing about with your current buildings and as we prepare for, you know, new projects and and renovations and
012additions as well. Um, also acoustics and ventilation. You know, understanding that younger kids their ear, their ear canals aren't as developed as some older kids might have a hard time hearing. Well, what are the mechanical systems like? How noisy are those mechanical systems? Do they have a lot of ambient background noise? Those are all questions that we we dive into with teachers, staff, and community throughout the process. So you might ask how do we involve students, faculty, administrators, the community in this process? We really see that there's primary three primary mechanisms to do that. One is a site committee at each of the schools that represents that school made up of principal, director of operations and facilities, teachers, students, parents, neighbors, architect and construction manager. and their their function is to tell you what the
013needs of that school is and then to vet potential solutions to any issues that might occur at that site. The second piece of that is the community group and in this process we invite anyone in the community to to participate in that process and we have had in Geneva when we did this in mid 2000 2005 we had over 200 people participating in those community meetings. um and we break them up into small groups so that we can get their input throughout that process. Um but we see that as being representatives of all aspects of the community. We often tell you that you should invite those people who are the leaders of the opposition as well as the leaders of the pros to both participate in that process because getting them together and on board
014with a single direction ultimately is the way you need to do this to get to a successful referendum. And then the third piece is really a district task force. It's made up of administration, board representatives, site committee representatives, community committee representatives, the architect, and the CM. And that task force is charged with filtering all the input from the site committees and from the community to ultimately formulate a recommendation up to the district administration to the board. So stakeholder engagement could take on u many different uh activities and and ways to engage community and teacher groups, students uh as well. And you know, for example, working through um some of the community forums. There could be opportunities there to update the community on the current state of the facilities. What are some of those challenges and
015pain points that you're having today? Um, as well as then having some visioning sessions where we're thinking about the future and we're we're putting your current facilities and the state they are aside and we're thinking about what do students and teachers need to support student outcomes as they move in from elementary to middle school to high school, college and career and workforce beyond and starting to identify what those gaps are with your current facilities. and that starts to inform the road mapap or that master plan for for the future there. Um, so you know, a few of these kind of fun interactive uh type of forums and workshops where we're printing large scale site concepts out onto the the gym floor. I remember this one here, we had three different concepts. we were just kind
016of pulling and doing overlays at a really large scale, walking around uh with different groups in the community, recording all the different feedback and the comments and you know eventually kind of summarizing those as we prepare a report out. Um but also with teacher groups um in that lower right corner, red dot, green dot voting where we're looking at um inspirational images and images of successful learning environments and talking about what's what they like, what they don't like. Really kind of getting them to voice um you know their concerns and their frustrations about maybe spaces they're in now and looking at them in completely different lens. Um and then lastly, you know, engaging those students, talking about what what school means to them and and where do they feel, you know, safe in the school
017and what spaces do they gravitate towards and how would they like to see uh their their schools uh develop over time. So those three primary uh pro steps in the process in the middle there, vision, program, and options. Vision really is about establishing what your values are, what your priorities are. Program is really got to do with the issues of capacity, how you deliver education and the condition of your existing facilities. Options is where we'll develop multiple ways of addressing those programmatic needs. And then going through that decision-making process is really about vetting what's the best one, what best meets your values and your program. This process we've worked with very successfully over the years. Most recent referendums that have passed include the the Glen View School District 34 $119 million referendum that is in
018its final phase of construction now. And then more rec most recently the Salt Creek School District 48 48 million referendum that the project just went out for bids or just got bids back I should say. And as I said, we've worked in Sycamore and Geneva doing this process, building to successful referendum that resulted in extensive building programs. It's a it's something that's worked very well for us and for the communities that we've worked in. So, defining a successful project. Um, as your project architect, it is my role to work with you and bring your vision to life through collaboration. So, I'm excited to get to know your staff members and your facilities in the process. Um, we'll get to do fun and exciting things like be creative, um, and think of big ideas, but we'll
019also work through any challenges that come along the way. Um, all in pursuit of improving the facilities. Um and as it's been mentioned um in the design process, we'll chat with staff members, community members, really any key stakeholders that will help us, um assure that the goals are being met and um ideas will evolve along the way and eventually we'll get to a point where um we'll have a thoughtful and detailed project. Um, and then personally for me, my favorite part of the journey is really when we get to a point when the things that we've been having conversations about and that live in our drawings start to be realized in a built form. Um, so it's a very proud moment to be able to turn the project back over to your team. Um, and
020start to see that next generation of users and interaction start to occur in the space. And yeah, I'll turn it back over to Troy. All right. So, in closing, we think we're the perfect partner for you. We have a long track record of doing this type of work, serving communities just like yours. It's something that we're passionate about. It's something that all of us have uh dedicated our careers to, and we look forward to the opportunity to work with you. Any questions? So, um, at the beginning you mentioned something about, um, community engagement and referendum support and you I I I heard something about like you you think that the referendum support should be somebody else, but then I heard a lot of stuff uh that seems to be supportive of referendum. So, can you
021explain? We do referend support in that we create materials that the district can utilize to explain to people what the referendum is all about. But we think strongly that having architect out there as the leader in the community telling people this is the right thing leading that process is the wrong message because it seems very self-serving for the architect to be out there. We think that somebody who is a professional in public relations and can do community polling, community surveys, who is gathering that kind of data on a continuous basis throughout the process is best working with the district to lead that process. Okay. And then um if if in the communities of where you've worked where there are you know uh referendum uh issues on the table are there organizations that you work with
022or that you would recommend to us for us to consider? Yeah, we work with two or three different consultants um creative creative entourage is one is another mostly service northeast Illinois. We do a really good job with that. And then you mentioned that you're a large firm. You're this team is out of the Westchester office. Um so I don't know if this is important or not, but I it's a something that I'd like to know. Um what percentage of your office represents K through 12? So as a firm, roughly 50% of the work the firm does is K12. Okay. Um and certainly out of Westchester it's right again right about 50% probably about 50%. So again you know our tagline is that we build community and that's because all of the projects that we do
023are community serving projects. So about 50% as Jim mentioned are PK-12 projects. The other 50% are made up of municipal projects like police stations, fire stations, park districts, town halls as well as higher ed and faith-based work as well. Thank you. Out of curiosity, what are you building for Glen View and Salt Creek for 119 and 48? Uh, so for Glen View, that's that's actually one of my projects. I'll have Nesma talk about Salt Creek in a second because that's one of her projects. But uh Glen View, we were brought in because their facilities were uh very outdated. They needed a lot of work. They didn't have the money to support it without going for a referendum. So they opted to go for referendum, not just for what they needed for maintenance purposes, but to
024go for more of what they dreamt of in terms of educational delivery. And so bringing full day kindergarten into the program was something that they'd never had. Modernizing their middle schools was something that was really uh a goal for them. And so we touched every classroom in the district. They have more than 430 classrooms throughout the district where we modernized those. Most of those had not had significant work since the 1980s. So it was pretty much a soup to nuts modernization of pretty much every facility district. Um Salt Creek was a little bit more based. So they had huge security and accessibility issues at the schools in the district. Um I think two out of the three entering. huge accessibility issue and then the administration offices were nowhere near the entrances. So really it was
025driven the primary reason was driven by security upgrades and then from there uh they had I think three tiers and tiers one through two were accepted. So the first one was security and then the next one was really outside of that and so we are reconstruction. totally tearing down their existing styling that in the same in a much larger footprint, same spot just to give them better facilities there. What have you learned about our district and our needs and what kind of what do you see as our greatest challenge? So, what we know about your district um is that you have elementary schools, middle school, two middle school and a high school. Um we know that you've got growing enrollment and there are pressing enrollment needs at certain locations. Um we know that you community
026was very divided about the proposal to build a new high school. um and that there are many that think a a different approach to the facility needs for the district might be u warranted. And so that's why we propose a master planning public engagement process to truly figure out what are the real options for meeting it, vetting those options with the community and getting people sort of going in the same direction as opposed to trying to kind of continue a divided camp approach. with all of your projects with the schools, have you ever helped the districts with grants or are you familiar with the grant process for Sure. Um we're not a dedicated grant writer, so we'll just throw that out there. But they are things that we work with uh all the time. So
027um you know from the small the you know school maintenance grants we work with all of our clients to pursue those on a yearly basis up to the very large you know we worked with one of our clients to secure a grant that was uh nearly $2 million uh to help renovate the building in a method that they were looking for was something that was very environmentally driven. But so yes, we are very familiar with that process and ready to step in and support you in pursuit of those grants. Obviously back in the day school construction um with the master planning um how long we did a uh what was it a enrollment study um so is that something that um you would be able to use and um would that in any appreciable way
028uh shorten the time frame for conducting a master plan? Yeah, absolutely. We would take all of the information that you have under facilities today. I'm assuming that Danny probably has a very good history and track record of all the facility issues that you have and so we would incorporate all the information he has into that process. Things like demographic studies looking at your enrollment and stuff like that. That's all part of that research phase. We're getting obviously walk that engagement process with teachers, administrators, students at each of the sites. So in a school district of our size, um how long do you think it would take to do a master plan? So way I put that is we can go very fast but it really has to do with what's logical in terms of timing
029for engagement and stuff. We don't want to make go such that you're asking somebody to show every two weeks kind of thing because people have baseballs and stuff in the winter but we want to go pretty quickly. So we probably need probably about a month up front to do that research phase and then each phase is about a month it all down to three months but typically it's five or six and more you have and the earlier you engage the community just the better the turnout more opportunities they're going to have to be a part of the process. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. It was very rude. I was just going to send a wrestling match. That's the wrestling. Huh? Did you hear the wrestling background information? I was I I
030didn't hear it. Oh, yeah. He's over here watching for I heard something in a gym. I was like, "What's this for?" Yeah. Yeah. And of course Ryan's like the noise. I stopped third period of a really tight man. Goodness gracious. Can't take him anywhere. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you. Oh, you know it. All right. Well, uh, thank you for inviting us into your community tonight. we really appreciate and we excited about the possibility of a partnership with 301. Um we have a lot to get through tonight. So um if it sounds like we're speed reading a little bit, give us a little we'll take a breath here and there, but uh we want to share what we can make sure that you know what what our team's capable of. So um I'm
031Dan Critter. I'm a partner with the company. I'm'll be serving as partner in charge uh for this effort. And uh thank you. I forgot to do got click. Yeah, clicking. Um, anyway, um, if it's not clear, I'm the historian of the group. I've been with Wol for 36 years and through that time frame and focused on K12 education clients, helping them that reach their visions. And uh, the role I'll be playing here will be make sure that as a partner in the firm that I'm bringing the resources to the team to make sure that you're successful, but I'll also be playing a heavy role in the community engagement process and through the master planning process. I'm Allison Andrews. Um, I've been primarily focused on preK12 education for my entire uh, tenure at Wald. Um, as
032the educational programmer, my responsibility is really to make sure that our planning and design um, processes are in alignment with your programmatic and educational goals. Um, I really enjoy this part of what I do day-to-day just because it allows me to really engage with a broad group of stakeholders and bring their vo their voices to the forefront of of what we're doing each and every other day. Um, so that way kind of the the outcomes of every process is in an alignment with who you are. And I'm Matt Burton. I'm a mechanical engineer with Wol. I've been working uh with Wol for 23 years primarily with school districts. Uh, and during that time, my role has kind of evolved from uh designing and drafting uh buildings and schools to now helping school districts plan and
033implement those projects. Uh, it's it's a role that I'm still currently with Grace Lake, Crystal Lake, Flossmore, a couple couple school districts along the way. Um, as Dan mentioned, part of that role is also to make sure that we've got the full breadth of that team available when we need it. Um, we've got tonight our planning team because that's where we are as a district. Uh, we're not ready to start implementing projects yet. We need to figure out what we want to do first. Um, so the rest of the people we've got listed there, that's on our implementation side, our project managers and our project team, as well as our outouse consultants we got listed. Um, we've worked with them for literally decades and we've worked with Ime and Ericson for about that same amount
034of time. We're currently working on uh projects with them currently. Um so really it's it's about uh bringing those resources to the team and I and I talk about we because I'm actually a part of the community as well. Uh my son Grayson is a first grader. I missed my first uh first grade class at Country Trails. So this is incredibly important to me personally to make sure that we're successful. Just a little bit about more about W as a firm. Um we're currently ranked number nine in the country as a K12 educational design firm and uh really what's f what's allowed us to grow to that level is uh our attention to customer service. We feel like we do that better than everybody else. We're working with 250 plus school districts across the Midwest.
03550 of those districts are here in north northern Illinois. Um some of them are your neighbors. Uh we're working with uh St. Charles and Keaneland. Uh I know they touch your southern borders. Uh but we're also with some other peer districts as Huntley, Woodstock, uh as far out as Mckenry and uh and Crystal Lake and and Glenbard. So districts, large districts that have large district challenges that we can bring to the table, lessons learned from that from that aspect. But I also touch to our national team. So we share stories across the country. Um, and there may be something that's working in one market that uh really is appropriate for discussion in your district as well. Um, we're also a long-standing sponsor of Luda. I know 301's a member of LUDA. Um, but we uh
036really enjoy being at the front seat to understand the challenge that large districts in Illinois are going through. We recognized right away that there was some alignment in our culture of our firm with some of your educational objectives. And we know how important that is from a stand ch standpoint of uh empowerment and inspiration. Those pieces are part of our culture as we look to make uh a difference in the communities that we serve. So having that alignment, I think is a really solid foundation to be a strong partner with 301. Tonight we're going to be focusing on um really the planning process. I know port projects are important as well. Um but we think based on what we know of the district and Matt being a a resident here, uh we think that the
037master planning process and that community engagement, that outreach is really the first step in being successful in 301. And that first step of any planning process is really understanding what are the challenges we're trying to solve. And we know we've got some challenges as a community. Starts with equity. We've got issues with equity as far as uh the curriculum and the extracurricular activities that we offer is not on par with our our neighboring districts. We've got equity issues from building to building when you consider the vintage of Lily Lake and CMS compared to a country trails and a PK and and how are those students uh do they have the same amenities in those two building and those different buildings. We also have equitability issues within our buildings themselves where we have students that are
038in mobile classrooms and students that are in the building and the challenges that come with how do they get distracted as they move from the the mobile classroom back to their specials in the building. If it's a rainy day or a cold day, there's distraction of trying to get get back to the focused on learning and also the safety issues that come with being not in the brick and mortar building as well. All of those are today issues and how we address those are going to be only amplified when we have growth coming with it. So, we got to find solutions that are going to be scalable, in a way that's going to address that growth, but also in a way that's going to we need to come up come to those solutions in a
039way that's going to be very transparent. It's going to be heavy in community involvement, and it's going to be in a way that's going to allow the community to trust the recommendations that come from that master plan. So, with 56 years of working with school districts, we've kind of developed a master plan we think is very proven and and is solid. Um, it really relies on two steps. The first step is focus on facts and we're going to talk about each of these topics in a little more detail. The second step is really focused on communication, collaboration, and engagement with your community and make sure that they have a voice in the process. Uh, we know that community outreach is really important to have a successful own have ownership in a solution moving forward. So,
040we we are emphatic about starting with the facts. You can't have a solid network and a solid communication at a master planning level if you don't have a a basis of facts. They're defensible. They give that uh that educational planning committee the backbone to make solid decisions. So, we're going to talk about some of the process of gaining that information. So, the first tool that we wanted to touch on is an educational alignment assessment. Um really this process is about assessing how your facilities today are either enhancing or potentially creating limitations to the way in which you can deliver education to your students. Um so in order to do that process really what we do is we meet with the building teams uh with each building and understand how are they utilizing it today? What
041opportunities do they see? Um what challenges might they be facing? where are some of those inequities that, you know, Matt has already identified, but where might there be others or or kind of, you know, on a on a scale, where do those fall? Um, but also challenge those those building teams to say, what might you do differently if you could if you had space? How might you expand a program? Um, is there an activity that you just can't currently, you know, accommodate because of some limiting factor? Let's unpack that. Let's understand that. Um, when we did this process with St. Charles, they went through a similar process. One of the important things for them was they wanted that that staff and faculty voice to make sure it carried through the process too. You know, this
042is the factf finding phase, but once we get into that second step, how are those voices still be a part of the process? So, what we did is we met with their um they had BLTs, building leadership teams um and asked those groups to actually prioritize our findings um of the opportunities and the challenges. So that way when we presented that data to the long range planning committee, their voices were represented in that group as well at a larger stage. Capacity enrollment is another factbased piece that we need and especially in a growing district and we know that you've worked with RSP. We have a long relationship with RSP. We worked with them in D15 as they went through additions and renovations and a referendum as well as boundary changes. Uh more recently we've uh
043worked with them in St. Charles as they uh really came on board to help with the boundary change discussion. So we speak their language. We understand uh um what functional capacity is and I think the outcome that they've provided in the report of functional capacity is probably the most conclusive piece that really helps us understand how much space you have in your buildings. The image on the left is just a page out of their report and uh they talk about functional capacity and at three of your elementary schools you're going to crest over that functional capacity in the in the upcoming years and uh we understand that that's going to put pressure on the building even more so than there is currently. We did a very similar exercise in St. Charles to understand not just
044the capacity of every building but also how does some of the things that Alison was talking about those inequities within the schools or between buildings that fall under there. So we created a heat map that helped uh the community and the administration understand where are some of the challenge areas spatially not just from an enrollment standpoint but also from uh an adequacy plan standpoint. Another aspect we want to look at is operational analysis because as we make these decisions it's going to impact your operations. So we want to take a look at things like if we start to look at moving students from one building to another, how does that impact your transportation costs? Um, we're also signitories to the ALA 2030 challenge. Uh, which means that we're working with all of our clients and
045and facilitating facilitating conversations on how to provide sustainable solutions. So, we want to filter that into those discussions as well to make sure that we're finding ways to save on uh utility bills as well. We also uh know that uh Dan and his team are working on updating uh the capital facility improvement plan uh in the next year or so. We want to make sure we're a part of that and the timing of it really wants to align with the master plan as well to find ways to make sure that uh uh the physical conditions of the building support what you're doing educationally and also can help to to mitigate some of those equity imbalances that we talked about. Uh it's also important from a budgeting standpoint to make sure that we got the dollars
046when we need them and where we need them. And Dan will be an integral part of that process as we start to to work through it, try to uh filter that information and and set priorities to what's important and how to time it out. Um, we want to make sure that, you know, if we've got, let's for say, for example, an air handling unit that is maybe at the end of useful life and we look at it from a life cycle only standpoint, it's ready to be replaced. But if it's in good shape and, you know, hasn't had any maintenance issues, maybe we can delay that a couple years and try to try to buy some more time with it. At the end of it, you'll have a deliverable that is not just a a
047physical report that is uh going to be that snapshot in time of where you are today. U which has got all the great graphs and charts and funding and all that fun stuff in it and floor plans. Uh but really the most important part is the the the database that comes out of that with each one of the issues because that becomes the living document and the tool that you're going to use going forward over that course of that 10 years because things change, right? Things break, things become our more urgent priority and we got to pull push and pull that stuff to make the the funding work and understand what it needs to happen. We know the importance also was to uh hear the diverse voices in your community. Um we've had great success
048with uh different ways of bringing those folks to the table and making sure that they have a voice in this process. Um Kanel really the top three there Kelan really focused on the listening sessions, the open houses and the surveying in their last goound from up to their successful referendum. Um but there's multitude of ways we can uh make sure we touch those voices and bring them to the table. Um it's also important to go meet people on their own terms, meet them on their own geographies. Don't have everything at one location. Make sure that we're we're giving them a voice where they feel comfortable. So, we'll talk a little bit more in the uh long range planning process, but we know how important this is. Sorry. Um just a quick snapshot. Uh these are
049districts that went through master planning process with us over the last four or five years. Um all but one went out to referendum successfully. And uh it shows on the spectrum different uh approaches where some are more internally driven to the right side and some are more communitydriven. So it's a more of an informative approach versus a more collaborative community engagement approach. So we know that there's everything across the spectrum can work just what fits for your district. the screen. Great question. That wasn't It wasn't snapping for would be unusual for me to mess up technology. That's part of the historian mindset. I'm not even still keep it connect. We've got a really we've got a really cute picture of Matt's son I know. We saw that. I thought he should have been here. Good
050for him to start exploding, right? That's fair. have any questions so far? If you have something you're going to jump to, go ahead. Yeah. So, uh um what percentage of your uh practice uh with the group that would work with us um is focused on K through 12. The group that's here tonight is exclusively. Exclusively. Yeah. Okay. our our management team as we get down through the project uh folks, project manager also exclusively in the K12 and then we would start to see a few people that may be crossing their government sector too just depending on how we ramp up our team but the people at the leadership levels are all focused on K12. Okay. Would you say like 50% of of you all is K not just your team but just the business in
051general is it is about K through 12 it's it's closer to 2/3 um We've been tracking about 60 to 70% the year all focused on K12 education. The uh the remainder is also public sector government side and we do have a couple of our office have senior living component too but our work is public sector. Got your team's office is located where? We're in Pal. Everybody here is local um as is our team involving people that are in our pal bring in resources from other offices if there's a specific talent or expertise that they can bring to the table but most of the work here. All right. Thank you. Sorry about that. I'm sure it was I'm sure it was me. Always. Um so one of the things that uh we promote and we believe
052strongly in is creating a facility ma uh planning committee and with that uh we've understood that once you have the facts in hand it's really important to have people that are willing to come to the table and that usually sweet spot is around 40 to 60 people but we've had groups of up up to 100 in a facility planning committee. Um so that's our next level of community engagement. Now, one of the things we found really successful is to break that group into focus groups and let them gravitate to the the passions or the topics that they're really important to them, whether it's uh planning or facilities or facility conditions. So, we create subgroups. You see this here, this is the model that we went through with St. Charles and their master plan which started
053about right at the beginning of COVID. But uh um it what was nice is it those smaller groups allowed people to feel less intimidated and speak their mind especially if it was something that they were really near and dear to them. The goal of this process is to get to a point where we're agreeing on needs. Uh very critical part. Allison will talk a little bit about that, but also get to an option that uh is really the best fit for the district and that this committee will recommend that to the school board for consideration at some point in the process. There's also some opportunities to bring in the community back in as a forum. Um, usually we like to do that around the point where we've got the needs list and at the option
054development and then again at the point where they're going to going to take a recommendation. So you have one more litmus test with the community of is this the right plan. All right. So just going to touch a little bit on kind of these four subsets to that starting with that needs agreement and that criteria. So, a large district like Central, there's going to be a lot of needs and wants that come out of that data collection find. And the process is really geared towards taking that information and really transforming it into what are our needs and what are some criteria for how we would want to move forward. Um, some examples up here that kind of showcase some of the different topics and categories alignment with those focus groups that Dan was just hitting
055on. But the critical piece of this is as we're looking at that information is that the group needs to the committee needs to come to consensus and agreement on those needs and consensus on the prioritization. Um when we were doing this in St. Charles, we the question was asked how do we prioritize? You know, everything's important, right? Um and so what we did was we worked with them to establish a language that really worked for them that was do now, do soon, or do later. and we used that language and that model to then take all of that information and transform it into a road map um that they could take on moving forward. So when I say that there's that big nice red stop sign, we can't move forward from here. As we say
056in our office, if needs will unite us, but those solutions will truly divide us. If we don't have consensus, the options are going to be endless and we won't really know where to start and how to kind of come to that best solution Dan was talking about. Um, so this is actually sort of just a graphic of how that looked with their do now, do soon, do later. And it really did become a road map for us to use as we went into the option development phase. Um, option development is exactly as it sounds, right? Um, we are test fitting different scenarios um, and seeing how they align with the goals and the vision. So, as I mentioned before, we've got to have that consensus. So, that way when we're evaluating those scenarios, are they
057addressing the needs that we've agreed to? Are they in alignment with our prioritization? If not, that's a that's probably an indicator that maybe that particular scenario isn't the right fit for us. Um, and we should go back and continue to, you know, evolve the plan. Um, but ultimately, it's coming to a point where you have information on how is this going to impact each of our buildings, how is this going to impact any of our specialized programs? Um, and for Keaneland, they also took it a step further and said, "We also need to have a strategy for how will we implement this?" Um, how can we tier our implementation? Because they were going to be going forward and engaging with their community and going out for referendum. And they knew that we kind of had
058to have a what what is that first step and what would be a second and a third? Just quickly, um, lots of ways to fund projects. We know that you've pursued the bond pathway. Um, but it's really critical to understand parallel with the master planning process, what funding options you have because ultimately one of the criteria that you weigh these options on is going to be cash. It's going to be the money that you can access and leverage. Um, so we understand that we go down that referendum path. Um, we've got great success stories. Um, we've passed in the last 15 help districts pass over5 billion dollars of the work. Uh, that's a corporate number. Um, but we really have a a technique of helping districts and there's two sides of the fence in that
059push to get the message out. There's a fact side, which is the administration and district employees and speaking to the public from a real informative side, but there's also the emotional side, which is your yes committee, and they can go out and actually say vote yes for this and give them the reasons why. We know how to help create media for both of those messaging tactics as uh you move into that ca that campaign. The one thing we uh this we created this very similar to the Keanland. They just used this in the last referendum, but it was an eightweek basically a task list to march forward and say what does that yes committee need to be doing on a daily weekly basis to make sure that they're getting the word out and the messaging
060out. Um so this was a successful uh playbook for them that uh we created. So once we get that successful referendum, it's time to start delivering out the project. And I'm going to fly through this just for the sake of time, but um really what it comes down to is look, the firms you're interviewing, they're all they're all completely qualified to to design and construct buildings. Um and we think what sets us apart is our our client experience. Um we very much focus on that and want to make sure that that's a an a good experience for you as a as a district. Um and that really involves all that participatory planning we just talked about. We take that same approach to our projects as well and make sure that we're having an inclusion inclusive
061process for that. So we want to get feedback from your district leadership, your building leadership, your staff and your students and implement that into the project all all along the way. And with that uh brings us to our closing remarks. I cannot stress enough how much we want to be your architect, how much I want to be your architect and work on that team as a as a parent in the district. Um I think that we are the best team. We bring um not only a depth of experience from across the Midwest and Chicagoland, but literally up and down the Randall Road corridor with your neighbors. And we've been successful implementing and planning projects for all of them for many many years. And I think that uh it's my job is going to be to
062make sure that we have those resources and that full breadth and depth of our of our entire company at your at your disposal and ready to make this successful. So with that, we will open it up to questions. So um with the master plan uh what do you anticipate the timeline or not the time though the time frame to uh conduct that for us? Sure. Yeah. It does vary but uh usually a master plan process can take 8 to nine months. You're going to have that community engagement. We would add the first three or four months. We want make sure we have that factf finding done and in and the fact booked and at their disposal for those meetings. Um and then it's usually be four to five months on a on a on a
063master plan process to have that community engagement involvement. So I would say nine months. It could go a month here or there but that's really kind of an average. And then um you divided up um I think it was the referendum portion where you've got the yes committee and then the administration side. Yes. Is that the is that the at the referendum phase? Yes. Okay. And do you help with that? Yeah, absolutely. Um for instance, in uh in Kan's most recently, um we helped the the administrative team create messaging and and media and support boards so they can go out and it just simply got the information out. They were very it it had to be informative. Uh it couldn't lean people into saying vote yes. On the flip side, um the yes committee, we're
064a little more hands-off because it it doesn't isn't tended to be self- serving, but we can put a framework for them so they're not starting in the dark. And there's campaign um companies, there's there's specialists that you can also hire to really push that envelope even further. Um but we feel we give at least give them that uh foundation so they know what to do in week eight, seven, six going leading up to the election. um we find that anything prior to a week eight and and and further out tends to burn citizens advisor or a yes committee out. So um that's kind of the sweet spot, but um every districts will dip in and we'll tailor that to help them out. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much. Thank you
065very much. This is the Dan night. This is the Dan show. You need a breather or is it a breather coming all the way from the back of the room? Thanks again. No, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Now try to send this without causing trouble here. You going to tell us the score? Well, it's probably over now. The match is already over. Oh, it's over. Okay. If it's not, those kids are real tired. That's for sure. All right. We'll move on to uh new business. Um mobile classroom options. Director Pley provide some options for us on the bowl units and pole barns. Um so the mobile pole barn conversation um we did evaluate the option of pole barns obviously because we built one for our transportation and buildings and grounds office
066building but the difference is as classroom space it doesn't work quite the same way. So pole barns fall into a whole different uh permitting structure where you have to put in things in there that we wouldn't have to do in our office space i.e. sprinklers and areas of evacuation and things of that nature. That's one factor. The other factor is location. All of our elementarymentaries are landlocked to find a place to put a permanent structure that would be of benefit to us in the future. We we don't have the land to do that. Even at Country Trails where we're talk where we're going to be adding another mobile unit, that's area of a future addition. By the time we put in a pole barn with a slab, put sewer and water that did all those
067things. It it's a million plus dollar option easily where where the mobiles are more cost effective. It's a temporary structure. So, it's designed that way and it's permanent as a temporary structure. So, they can be removed at the point we have another option, i.e. addition. So, it's it's an option we evaluated. We definitely looked at and it just in working with the ROE, we've had numerous conversations with the ROE about it, trying to figure out what our best options are. I know some neighboring communities are going that way. Kendall County. Yep. Yep. And that the main one is Kendall County, so it's not even in K County. So, our ROE wouldn't even speak to how or what they're doing. I know it's three to four million dollars that they're putting into that into that project.
068So, so that's kind of where that's at. So, it's not something we didn't evaluate. Believe me, I I mean, we're look we looked at every option that we could think of for a temporary solution and mobile is where we kept landing. And remind us the cost of mobiles. So, the current the current mobile for the mobile itself is roughly $540,000ish. Don't hold me. It's in that neighbor. It's under 600,000 for the mobile itself. Then we have the utilities to hook up and the rest of it. And then the pump out washroom facility. So yeah, said and done. We'll probably be in that 3/4 3/4 of a million to 800,000. We get electric hooked up and the connecting link and all the other parts to it. And that's per mobile. Yes. That's just for the country
069trails mobile. Correct. That we're doing that we're doing now. Correct. And how many classrooms? That's four four additional classrooms. And are you saying that right now as far as the need is just country trails or are you looking for that's that's the current need right at this time is the multiple meetings we've had in discussions and looking at our student populations that's where the imminent need is. Yeah. I know the foreseeable future it's at every elementary. Right. Right. I mean we have space and infrastructure i.e. power and things like that to add mobiles to the other three sites. we had the the foresight and the planning to kind of think through what that could possibly look like knowing that there wasn't a lot of short-term options. Um the mobile we have currently at the elementaryaries,
070what's the shelf life? Like I know we've had them for like 20 20 plus years. Oh 20 years. Yeah. Yeah. The infrastructure in there I it's mechanical equipment will and can fail, you know, all those pieces. It's it's it's not as obviously as as good as a brickandmortar structure, but the infrastructure pieces will hold up 20 plus years. We've had the mobile at at the high school for it's got to be going on nine or 10 years now. Yeah. So, what what's the do you know what the yearly cost is to just for utilities and maintenance of those units? Um, I know the number I know offhand is it's roughly $10,000 a week that we spend on the water and waste in those units. That's for districtwide. That's for all four locations. So, that's that's
071a cost I know of. As far as the the electric and maintenance wise, I I don't have those numbers. It's probably I would say just off the cuff it's not much different than just what we're doing in the building, you know, a classroom space. Yeah. They're each individual air conditioning, heating units, so it's not, you know, individually controlled thermostat. So there's not like a lot of utility waste, anything astronomical. When you said no, they said it's not it's not short-term feasible option. If you're going to do something like that, you better be looking longterm. And they're they said, "You might as well look at doing an addition. If you're going to spend that kind of money on a on a pole bar, you might as well put an addition on. You're going to have to
072do the same same permitting. Same things are going to have to be done. All right. Um, you'll talk to us about the lease of Okay. We limited things we can say about this, but we have a snafu in our current plan that you approved a year ago and I can't get into the dollar and census of it. We have to do talk about that in close session. So, but we do have a problem and and we have a time problem because they need to seed the property by May one late is May 15th. So, the board needs to act uh on a proposal that is right in front of us right now. But because we're going to deal with the dollars and cents of it, uh, and we have competitive, uh, people that would like
073to bid on this, I'd like to have close session to discuss it. Okay, that's all we had. All right, join to close session. I need a motion, second or required to adjourn open session and move to close session. So move. Second. Roll call vote is taken. Gorman, yes. Pepis, yes. Yeah. A thief. Yes.