Williamsburg school district plans building upgrades

(The following is from Superintendent Chad Garber’s blog.)

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I wanted to dedicate a full blog entry to share some really exciting news with you regarding the facilities review that you’ve heard me write about in the Raider Six over the course of the past several months.

What’s the exciting news? Emergent Architecture has provided their facilities review report to the District, and with that report, a two phase plan that helps to maintain and strengthen existing facilities and equipment, as well as creating some new space for students and staff members at each building.

The projects that have been proposed are pretty wide-ranging. You’ll see changes at both buildings: addition of a 5th/6th grade wing at Mary Welsh Elementary; additional parking at Mary Welsh Elementary; consolidation of cafeterias and creation of a commons/lunch room at the junior/senior high school; heating-ventilation-air conditioning updates to existing equipment at both buildings; installation of LED lighting at Mary Welsh Elementary; updates to classrooms at Mary Welsh Elementary.

Construction of a Career and Technical Education Center; increased space for Instrumental Music Program at the junior/senior high school; updates to classrooms.

The projects meet needs identified in fine arts, career and technical education, securing infrastructure for the future, safety, energy efficiency and creating space that more closely matches the teaching and learning of our kids and staff in the 21st Century.

If a facilities review sounds like a lot of work, you’re right … it is. So how did we determine these projects were priorities?

Emergent Architecture and their engineering partner BlueStone Engineering toured our facilities to assess their current condition. Teams from Emergent met with members of several teams in our district: fine arts, administrative, local law enforcement, food and nutrition staff, athletics, transportation, and maintenance.

In addition to those meetings, a group of community members met on three different occasions to talk about what they noticed about our school, and what priorities they had for our school facilities.

Emergent Architecture also spent time comparing our educational space to other districts, including both new construction and existing facilities.

Our admin team spent time touring a new elementary school building, a new junior/senior high school, and a new career and technical education center to see how other districts are building schools at each of those levels.

Emergent met several times with our administrative team, where we were able to talk about priorities for our buildings. Nick Hildebrandt (Emergent Architecture) and his team took in all of that feedback and developed a master plan.

That plan was presented to the Board, who spent time with Nick and members of his team talking about the needs of the district, the available resources, and the timeline to get much of this work accomplished.

Without question, we are fortunate to have really nice facilities at Williamsburg Schools. Just like any facility, they age over time and require repair and/or replacement.

And just like many industries and fields, the practices and environments that are most effective start to change over time as we learn more, as the needs of who we’re working with change, and as the expectations for the end-product increase.

Identifying a challenge is pretty exciting, and working to figure out a solution is equally exciting in a school.

How will we pay for it? We’ve been fortunate to pay off the general obligation (GO) bonds associated with the new gymnasium nine years early. Yes … nine years!

We’ll ask voters in November to continue to allow the district to use property tax to help pay for facilities and infrastructure improvements in Phase II of the project, and we’ll use our statewide sales tax dollars for Phase I of the project.

Construction and renovation is expensive, but we believe the resources to meet the needs of the district currently and to prepare the district for stability in our facilities for the future can be secured.

This summer, look for us to communicate more information about these projects through outlets that you’re familiar with, and in early June, expect us to broaden our communications horizons a bit. A

Our intention is that you feel like you’re up-to-date on what’s happening in your school district, including our progress toward making these construction and renovation projects a reality.