001The time is 6 o'clock on May 27th and this special meeting of El Campo Independent School District Board of Trustees is now called to order. Let the record show that this meeting was duly posted in accordance with section 551 043 of Texas government code with regards to posting those public meetings and that there's a quorum of members present at this time would you please rise for opening prayer God uh thanks for allowing us uh all to get together today uh to uh address u a couple uh items here uh in the special call meeting. Um just allow us to make the correct decisions and everything we do and uh appreciate everything that you have allowed for us uh uh throughout the day and our lives. So u thanks again for uh bringing us here. Amen.
002Amen. Amen. I pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all sign out there since we want since not if if everyone has not signed in would you make sure before you leave that you sign in because I know not everybody is going to be speaking so we want to have a record of everyone that was here So, there's some sign-in sheets right outside the door. Griselda can help you do that if necessary. Okay. Public comment. Uh, we have three. Got to read it first. Okay. At regular meetings, the board shall allow 15 minutes to hear persons who desire to make comment to the board that are not related to items on the agenda on
003the night of regular meeting. Persons wishing to participate in this portion of the meeting shall sign up before the meeting begins and shall indicate the topic. Delegations of more than five persons shall point one person to present their views before the board. No presentation shall exceed five minutes in time. Um on another note uh because these are not on the agenda, we can we will listen but we can't respond to any comment. Um, first up I have uh Michael Deila. Um, would you wish to make a comment? Do you want me to comment? Yes, please. Hello, my name is Michael Davila. I understand the school is planning on closing the automotive program soon. I'm here to voice my opinion on closing it. I think the program has helped many students get fundamentals in the automotive
004field, including myself. I went through the automotive program my junior senior year of high school way back in 1991 and '92. It helped set me on a career path that started as a helper independent shop where I started work in 1990 to a dealership technician. I started in 1993 and I lasted there till I started my own repair business in 2010. I'm proud to say we've been serving El Campo lead automotive for 16 years. There's also many other success stories that have come out of the automotive program here in El Campo High School. I'm sure there has been more automotive or industrial equipment technicians, parts store employees, come out of this program and sports programs had graduates go on to become pro ball players or tutors become professional dancers. So I think closing it would
005cause a shortfall in many students learning about the automotive field. This field is not easy. It's not a field anyone can master. Takes strong reading and comprehension skills. The ability to read electrical hydraulic schematics, diagnostic flowcharts written by people with master's degrees in engineering. We have to understand how these systems work and how to repair them. Today's cars and trucks are the most complicated thing most of us deal with on a daily basis. Most new cars have 30 to 40 computers, at least three separate communication systems that all have to work together just to get it to start. Repairing new cars and trucks isn't for everyone, but it can be rewarding and good earning potential. Knowing a teacher, doctor, nurse, firefighter, EMT, or even yourself made it to work today because you fixed your car
006is a good feeling to have. There's already a shortage of technicians locally and across the globe. Many of us are approaching retirement age and there's no one to replace us. Closing this program will hurt our shortage even more. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Stan Prochazka High School automotive program. Good evening. Evening everyone. I'm Stan Prochazka, current automotive teacher. Uh I am a lifelong El Campo resident. Uh I am a rice bird. I graduated from here in ' 83. So I have ties to the community and everything. Uh before I became the automotive teacher, I was a automotive technician for over 35 years at various places in here in El Campo. Uh to tell you a little bit about what I do at teaching, uh I see about usually a hundred students
007per day. Okay. ninth, 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. Okay? And uh we teach them a a variety of maintenance uh safety stuff we do in the shop. We do repairs in the cars and everything. Okay. Um I currently I have students and these are seniors. Uh they're working at Mustang Cat, VonDerAu Ford, Hlavinkas, Shoppas, Superior Motor Parts, Stevens Auto Body, and even at the bus barn. Okay. Um my students uh really enjoyed the program. I think it's really vital to El Campo. Uh there's a real real need for skilled automotive technicians. Okay. uh there's a shortage of automotive technicians and uh I think that this program helps to get technicians out into the workforce. Uh this program has been in been in existence for 63 years since 1963 in the same place. Okay. In the
008same shop that I'm in now. Uh I would like to end by saying uh uh I would ask y'all to please continue this automotive program at the El Campo High School. Okay. Uh I would like just all the current and former students or those that have gone through the program to stand up now and they can introduce themselves. Hello everybody. I'm Hayden Hooker. Uh I'm going I'm to be a senior this year and uh Mr. P is a good teacher and I feel like this uh this program is very you know like he said vital because it it just it teaches it teaches us so a lot so many job opportunities so many opportunities after high school and uh that's that's my point right there. Thank you everybody. Yes sir. Or sorry uh I'm Justin
009Wler and I'm also a student of Mr. P and I think y'all should keep the auto tech program as it's it's good for young kids to understand how to work on things, how to do things. And currently I'm employed at VonDerAu because of this program. Without it, I wouldn't be able to know how to do things. I wouldn't have a job. I wouldn't be able to make a career for myself. Um Bryce Mills, I just recently graduated top 10%. Um, soon as I graduated high school, I landed a good job as a level two tech at Mustang CAT, making $20 an hour straight out of graduation. I mean, Mr. P was an amazing teacher to me. I mean, I couldn't have been nowhere near where I'm at. I mean, I'd be in debt with college.
010I would have no direction it wasn't for this automotive program. I mean, Mr. P showed me how to replace an engine on my truck twice. So, I mean, just the skills I've learned from this, I just can't find it nowhere else. You know, El Campo is an agricultural area here in the town. You know, we need tractors, we need equipment, we the equipment you're using to remodel the school is what I work on. So, just please keep this in mind and please consider keeping this program running. My name Salazar. I work at Hlavinka. Uh I've been a student at high school automotive and I barely graduated this year. Thank God. Uh, I'mma I'mma say that a lot of kids don't learn reading and writing. I learned by um, you know, grabbing a wrench and just
011turning the heck out of it. So, uh, I really I um I really want y'all to keep this in mind that a lot of students don't learn reading and write. A lot of students turn. Like I said, uh that's it. Thank you so much. So, my name is Agus Bologanos and I work at Shoppas John Deere. And if it wasn't for the automotive industry, I would for sure not have this job right now. And I think that this program is really, really vital for young children to be able to learn about the automotive industry because just like Mr. G said, there's a shortage and we need auto technicians. I know I have some friends that are automotive industry that really like this program and I'm just really disappointed to see it go because it's helped
012me and my friends get jobs like you could be here standing. So, thank you. My name is Elijah. I work at one year. Good. Keep going. That was your five minutes, but keep going. Yeah, we're almost done. It helped me get my foot in the door for college and I didn't really know where to go after sports and everything and just put my foot in college. So I finished my first year already my second year. Thank you. Hello. My name is Sam Loredo. I am a incoming senior and um I finally have a job at VonDerAu because of this program. I think this program should stay because it's really well maintained and uh the instructor Mr. P is a very great man. He's a great mentor and shows you how to do things right. Thank
013you. Thank Bills. I started out in the program in high school. Ended up working for VonDerAu Ford for 20 plus years. went on to open my own business with Mike and we have a lot of trouble finding technicians. And if they're not introduced to it in high school, where are they going to be introduced to it? They need a chance to see what's going on because you get out of high school and try to go to work for us or any of these other shops, it's going to be hard. They need to have some knowledge before they come to work in a shop. And this program gives them that. said my piece a while ago. We got everybody real quick here. I was uh excuse me, Frank. I'm the service manager at Don Davis and
014I'm a product of y'all school as well and automotive program. Uh put it simply, automotive was my plan B that became my plan A. uh meaning you learn the industry fairly quickly, you make money fairly quickly while you chase those dreams and sometimes those dreams just kind of wither away and you need a solid plan for that. Now I'm a service manager at Don Davis and I couldn't be happier without y'all's program. That wouldn't have been possible. Thank you. John VonDerAu. Good evening everyone. Uh my name is John VonDerAu Ford here in El Campo Uh and I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight about the importance of keeping the uh automotive technician program in our school district. For many people, an automotive program may just look like another elect. Uh but for communities like ours,
015it's more than that. Uh it's a direct pathway to skilled careers, financial stability, and keeping talented young people right here in El Campo. Um as a local dealership, we're facing the same challenges uh happening across the entire country. Uh severe shortage of qualified technicians. Uh as Mike said, modern vehicles are incredibly advanced. Uh today's technology and technicians work with electrical systems, diagnostics, software, hybrid technology, complex engineering. Uh these are highskilled, high demand careers that cannot be outsourced. U programs like this create the first spark of interest for students who may not see themselves following a traditional 4-year college program. Um, it gives them hands-on experience, uh, confidence, uh, and direction, especially like was mentioned, you know, some of these guys may not excel in English and math and and all of the traditional things, but,
016uh, they learn great hands-on, and it when they gain that experience and get in that environment and have success, it creates confidence and and and competence and and gives them self-worth uh that drives them to go fun and have great careers. Um, this program also creates a direct pipeline for us to Sanento uh through the asset program uh one of the best automotive training programs in the country. Uh students continue their education while working in the dealership uh and gaining you know um high high skill level certifications. Uh many of them graduate with little or no student debt. Uh so they're coming out with all their certifications, a uh associates degree, and a career lined up for them uh where they can make make a great living and they don't have a you know student
017loans on their back. Um because when a Ford technician chooses to stay in El Campo for their career, the impacts go far beyond the job. um you know that technician buys a home here, raises a family here. Um they pay taxes here. Uh they shop here locally. Uh volunteer in the community. Um you know, they support our schools and our churches. Uh over the course of their career, that can represent millions of dollars flowing back into this very community. Um, and from a dealership perspective, a a long-term technician is invaluable. Uh, a great technician can support thousands of customers over their career. Uh, help keep local businesses operating. Uh, supports farmers, ranchers, uh, during critical seasons, uh, and then mentor the next generation uh, coming up as well. Um, but none of that starts without
018early exposure. Um, if we remove programs like this, we're not just cutting a class. Uh, we're cutting off opportunity. Uh, we're removing a pathway that serves students who learn different, think different, and thrive with hands-on education. Um, I truly believe that investing in career technology education is investing in the future of El Campo. Um, thank you for your time. uh respectfully ask you to continue to support the automotive technician program uh that benefits our students uh our local businesses and our entire community. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. That moves us to the I guess we don't have a consent agenda today. No consent agenda. No consent agenda. So, that moves us through discussion and action items. Uh, consider approval of the guaranteed maximum price for Hutchins Elementary Construction. Mr. Polasek,
019you're up. Now, we would love everyone to stay and hear this, but we understand there's two things I want to make sure that happen before any of you think about leaving. Number one, make sure you sign in so we know everybody is here. Um, good place to contact you. The second thing I would share with you is that um we're about ready to go into a presentation about um Hutchins Elementary and the construction project. And so uh you're more than welcome to sit and listen to it or you can find your way out. Please feel free to stay. And if you don't want to stay, you can watch it tomorrow on uh Valerie will have it up online. Thank you all for coming. Thank you. So before Greg starts, I just would like to draw
020attention to everyone. Um I'm going to shut this off, turn it back on. So I'm going to kind of turn it sideways. So, what you have in front of you are all of the items that have been determined through many multiple meetings. Um, we've got on this first table are the floor samples for carpet and the luxury vinyl tile. On the second table are the things like um the ceilings, the window shades, um coverings. on the far left side of the table, our right, as we're looking at it, are the tiles that will go into like the bathrooms. And the middle section with the colors are the the materials that would be used for the hanging birds in the library. the front table. And I'm gonna leave those out there because there's on the far
021right on far right as we're looking at them are some tiles for acoustics and one of them's got a pattern in it. The next set over is um products that will be used in the front entrance area. You can see the red and the white. There's some rice bird grass inside of a a laminate. Um then there's baffles and then uh wall uh what's it called? Wilson art laminate P lamb that goes the next one is all the hard surfaces countertops. The next one over is the athletic flooring and the vinyl that goes in the in the um gymnasium. And the far left are some more accent colors. So if you'll look you'll see them all up here. Now you have a chance to look at them out there and they go in this building
022and this is what is being constructed right now. Greg has the entire um basic select fill in place. Um we're waiting for tonight to do things like the plumber etc. that would allow them the next stage which will be the concrete. That's a a good view of the front office as you come in. And you can see like right there is the rice bird grass, the rice grass. Um there's more wall colorings. You can see the carpet that's on the floor. Uh those again are more of the same type of samples. That's the library. This over here is that piece right right there. So, you can see that's the library. There it is from another view. More of the same samples, how those two carpets blend in the hallway. More of it where it will
023go. There's the gymnasium, but that that's just a schematic of what it'll look like. We'll have those different uh coverings on the floor and questions anybody might have about that. Did we ask the teachers what they This has been through? Kathy, we've been through just check this is you're more than welcome to but we we went through like uh teachers every everybody has had an input the principals we I we we felt like we gave them so much that we ended up having to go back and okay like we went just so everyone in this room is clear I want to start off with by telling everybody the bond was for a 41,000 square foot building at $25 million. I'm just going to throw out a number and Greg will give you the exact numbers.
024We ended up after going to all the teachers with a 54,000 square foot building and we came in at pretty much the same price. So, I want everybody to recognize this came from lots of people. So, we increased the the size. I know it's a good question, but yes, I do feel like we went head over heels asking for people's input. And I think that Greg probably felt a little bit of the stress because we increased the size of the building by 13,000 square feet. And when you're talking about construction costs, he had to find ways to come up and do it within budget. Good job. Thank you. Stay there to teachers to change things. Yeah. Okay. As a former teacher, where are you going to put this carpet? Front office. Okay. Okay. We used
025to have carpet in our room. Nope. We we've got At this point, Kathy, let me tell you, everybody at the table, there's no going back and changing things. This this was vetted by all the teachers, okay? And we're not changing. We've got a guaranteed maximum price with everything you see on the table. All right. Cool. And we are we there is no no takebacks like at the front office like right here where it says Hutchins ES Ricebirds El Campo ISD. That's just Are we going to have the ES? Like I assume that stands for elementary school. Is that those are all things that are still that's flexible. Okay. Okay. Because it took me a minute. I kept trying to figure that out when you had that up there. Hutchins. It's non-negotiable. We're not changing. Well,
026that kind of stuff. We just Okay. That just Yeah, that kind of threw me. Anyway, okay. Sorry, Greg. I just want to make sure they saw the whole package before we We're good. Basically what we did was on May the 19th we took proposals for package two which consisted of everything after the foundation. At this point in time we've actually did the building plan all the site utilities. We've actually drilled concrete peers and now we need a plumber electrician to put everything in so we can keep moving forward. So on May the 19th we received quite a few proposals and we've actually been going over those for the past week. week and a half u contacting different people trying to get the price as tight as we could. And I feel pretty good about it
027because in the end result, I'm not going to I'm not going to go through all this. I'm just going to tell you to go to page eight, which will actually give you the uh grand total for this package. It's $15,434,017. That puts us with package one and package two slightly over what the OPC was when we did it way back in October of last year. We still have some VE items that we're working on. Think we may be able to save another $250,000 which would be put back in the owner's contingency. That money can then be if it's left over at the end of the job that basically the owner doesn't want to do anything to spend that money while the job is going on. they will actually we'll credit that money back to them.
028So basically it's it's dollars that the district can use however they need to. But this package along with the first one is right around 18 5 and we were originally thinking we're going to be around 18. So, we've got a 14,000 square square square foot building that is uh I feel like it's done at a great price. They've got a lot of good finishes in it. I think the school district and y'all should all be proud of what y'all done to this point. Um I feel like the teachers are going to be very happy with it. And like Bob said, everybody had their input. We probably had 10 meetings about this kind of stuff. So, uh, I guess tonight I would actually ask y'all to approve the second one so we can keep moving forward.
029We started out at what square footage and we ended where? 41,000 when we did the original did the bond. We ended up at 54400. Okay. Um, where were the add-ons? I assume it's probably in this size of classroom generally. It just that's how it came out when the uh when ParkHill drew it. Well, I can I can give you because I was in I have not missed a meeting. So, I've been in every one of them. I can tell you where the size came from. The size came from additions of three science classrooms, additions of flex classrooms, so that somewhere down the road if we had to have growth in population, we had places to go. So, we went from the original 12 classrooms per um per grade level to I think we ended up
030with close to 30 classrooms throughout. Okay. We increased the size of some of this the uh high high needs life skills rooms, the behavior rooms. We uh increased the size of some of the office spaces areas um teachers lounge just okay several things. So we we essentially increased it 30% in size. Yes. Where did what did we what came in cheaper than what we thought was going to come in considering that we that we had 30%. I think it's way we worked the numbers. I feel pretty good that that's us being a business and we've got a loyal following so to speak and just like we went back out. We got numbers that were higher than what we ended up with. But at the same time, uh I think that's the benefit of doing numbers
031up front when we did them back in October of last year. I can go back to them same people that did those numbers and I can say, "Hey, your budget was X. Why are you at this?" Was that the budget was 41 or was that based on 54? the budget when we did the OPC was actually all 54. Oh yes, that's right. We were like were we like way under like cost ParkHill did it when they did the budget for the Bond we had 41. Their price per square foot was probably 30% higher than what we brought it in for. Okay, that's the difference. Gotcha. And and I will say this about the entire project. Um there were things in in Greg's bid that um we are going to value engineer out. So we think
032we're going to end up becoming much closer to our original OPC. But I need everybody in this room to recognize things have changed since November. Right. Number one, we're in war with probably the largest oil producing nation in the world and so gas prices have gone up. Yeah, tariffs have been increasing. Um there are lots of things going on that have made this a volatile situation. And so, um, I think that, Greg's done a very good job and so has ParkHill at trying to come through. They I can kind of see where um, James is coming from regarding that we increased the size of the building by 30%. But we knew that when we went out for OPC in November. Yeah. I think my concern is that prices have went up based on what you've
033said and we've increased the size 30% based on our original and we're still coming in budget. Well, I just want to make sure that we're not and I mean I know y'all went through this with a fine comb, but I just like that. Well, I'll tell you numbers wise makes me a little nervous that we added that much and the costes went up 10 to 15% on some things and we're still in budget which is great but numbers wise that makes me a little the only way I can attribute that James is ParkHill basically set that budget right I had nothing to do with it. Yeah. When I saw the numbers, the original numbers, what they were carrying per square foot, I said, "That's not even close." Right? So, I mean, it's good that they
034had that in there because you were able to do what you did, right? Increase the size of the building, but 300 something dollars a square foot compared to 400, almost 500. That's not logical, but you know, when you do build a school maybe in Dallas or Houston or something, it's probably going to cost you a lot more than it does here in El Campo. Sure. So, it's a square foot price in the end. Yeah. And that's that's we feel comfortable with that price. Yeah. No worries. Awesome. Um, seek a motion to approve the guaranteed maximum price for Hutchins Elementary. I so move of $15,434,017. Have to get that on the on the record. On the record. $15,434,017. I move. Got a motion to approve from Clayton. I'll second it. Second by Susan. All in favor,
035raise your right hand. Approved unanimous. So, we're not going to go through the rest of your book?