If observers have not noticed – after two School Board meetings and almost two whirl-a-gig months on the job that there is a new sheriff in town and a new prevailing tone, they should have.
Last school year when Supt. Dave LaRose still was on his old job in Washington state, the mention of “capital projects” around the School District was like uttering obscenities in church. The bare mention of “solar” sets off exploding emotions.
It got ugly faster than you could count the number of letters in that descriptive term. Opposing forces instinctively dropped into mud-wrestling mode.
Last night’s School Board meeting was Mr. LaRose’s first test, and later he summarized his presentation.
“I provided the Board and the community an update,” he said, “sharing very, very little about where we were because a lot of people spent a lot of time, a lot of energy and a lot of emotion around that.
“So I went back to decisions that were made (last) Nov. 22 in terms of what the project priorities were, what the commitments were and were not around the budget, and I gave updates on the process and progress that has been made.”
Supporting Commitments
Mr. LaRose said the main takeaway was that “we are just moving ahead in terms of honoring the commitment made Nov. 22, 2011, on project priorities.
“What I was able to do was to provide updates about where we are around the work on solar panels for the parking lot, the athletic renovations, where we are on the Robert Frost Auditorium, and where we are on the elevators.
“Also, today we are doing our interviews around a construction manager. We will be doing interviews around the feasibility study for the Robert Frost.
“Then I made a real assertive effort around ‘how do we become more intentional about our communication around what we are doing, what’s next, what are the milestones and what’s the project and how do they work.
“I meant communication with everyone. My commitment to the Board is that (capital projects updates) will be a monthly presentation. I talked about how our web presence and documents I shared last night will have a presence.
“We talked about the formation of what I called Our Capital Plan Support Group. That means oversight. ‘Oversight’ sometimes has too much of a ‘this is an accountability team.’ Really what it is is a multi-year community team to some consensus around areas that need to be addressed.
Support Group’s Mission
“How do we work together to continue to communicate and offer assurances? And also meet regularly to be able to say when someone, somewhere possibly throws us a curve, when construction happens and finance happens, and then you are counting on anything from Sacramento.
“We need to ensure that we are working together and communicating on a regular basis.”
Mr. LaRose said he could not summarize the completion dates on the four projects. The reason is a dollar sign.
“We cannot because we started with a broad generalization, what might those budgets be?” he said. “What might that scope be? At the end of the day, the scope is going to be tied to what you can afford and when you can afford it.
“Our focus is to begin to narrow the focus because our specifications for projects has been (Division of the State Architect-) approved. So when you go to bid, you will find out what the real costs are.
“Our projects have been initially identified as approved for eligibility for modernization grants. But when you get that money and how much you are going to get is not there. So it is about starting to coordinate that, and what it looks like step-by-step.
“That is why,” said Mr. LaRose, “I believe it is important to have that support group, having an almost interactive resource to say ‘what are we doing? What is next?’
“That is our commitment.”
