Todd Paris, Staff Writer
♦ One of my favorite Broaday musicals is “The Music Man,” a Broadway hit and Tony Award winners with a hit 1962 movie adaptation. The plot concerns con man, Harold Hill, who poses as a boys’ band organizer to sell band instruments and uniforms to the naive townsfolk, promising to train the high school band members. The rub: Mr. Hill was not a musician and planned to skip town with the money. I highly recommend the child-friendly movie to families. Selections are on “YouTube.”
In a totally unrelated matter; on April 7, 2016 the Rowan-Salisbury Board of Education, including members Josh Wagner, Chuck Hughes and Susan Cox under the leadership of Superintendent Lynn Moody released “Salisbury Schools Redistricting Preliminary Investigations.” This report includes only a “Scenario 1” and this preliminary investigation apparently was produced with the assistance of sfL+a Architects.
sfL+a Architects build schools:
See: http://www.sfla.biz/work/k12/
They appear to be quite competent and construct beautiful, energy efficient school buildings.
While a complete critique of this preliminary Investigation and its “Nightmare Scenario” is beyond the scope of this article, the “harm” sought to be corrected is school overcapacity. We have too many open seats and the answer is to close rural elementary schools, produce approximately 100% utilization in remaining schools and construct nice new merged ones closer to the I-85 corridor. BoE member Chuck Hughes publically stated the costs may exceed 100M. The plan would close down to six rural elementary schools and disrupt over 4,000 elementary school students and affect nearly every elementary school district in the county. No need to guess or estimate on this. This info comes from their plan attached at the bottom of this article.
Talks of spending huge amounts of money on new schools in a school system that is overcapacity are not unique to Rowan, nor is the involvement of sfL+a in such a discussion. This is also happening right now in Robeson County, North Carolina.
http://robesonian.com/news/86796/robeson-county-schools-plan-up-for-debate
To quote Gabrielle Isaac’s April 23rd, 2016 article in “The Robesonian,” Robeson County schools plan up for debate:
“The proposal is for 30 schools to close, 14 to be built, including a career and technical high school, and five to be renovated” and quoting an official with the firm, “Robbie Ferris, president of the sfL+a Architects, says the K through 8th grades schools would have one entrance with separate corridors for each grade level. “
The article goes on to say, “The Raleigh firm has built more than 1,000 schools in North Carolina and South Carolina. The plan is for the school system, under a lease-purchase agreement, to pay off the cost over the course of 40 years. Proponents say the system will save money in the long run because of reductions in the cost of maintenance, heating and cooling and other expenses related to the conditions of the schools.”
Businessdictionary.com defines “conflict of interest” as “A situation that has the potential to undermine the impartiality of a person because of the possibility of a clash between the person’s self-interest and professional interest or public interest.” This could occur if the architects that the BoE claimed to assist with the “investigation” to determine whether we need to close schools and build new ones are allowed to be the managing architects on the new school construction. Such fees regularly exceed 5% of the total cost of the project.
There may be some that assume I am off-mark and that awarding the managing architect for school buildings would be, by law, lowest sealed open bidding or some such scheme. They would be wrong. While a full discussion of this beyond the scope of this article, “the procurement of professional services performed by architects, engineers, surveyors, and construction managers at risk is governed by G.S. 143-64.31,” sometimes referred to as “The Mini-Brooks Act” (from NCSOG’s “Coates Cannons” – link below) The BoE is required to use the Qualifications-Based Selection (QBS) scheme that “focuses on the qualifications of potential firms rather than their fees or the price of the contract.” Who better qualified to do the management than the firm that helped with the “investigation?” For those seeking a better understanding of this process:
http://canons.sog.unc.edu/mini-brooks-act-faqs/
This could easily have been be averted by a contract clause that said if sfL+a helps create the report that they will not be eligible to be managing architects the new construction. On April 19, 2016 I submitted a FOIA request to RSS asking in part, “Please provide any and all documents between sfL+a and RSS, including but not limited to any agreements or contracts that sfL+a will not be the managing Architects for any school construction.” There has been no response.
The only way to sell a school system on building more schools is to close schools. Then you create 100% utilization and need to build more schools. Standard rates for Architectural firms are about 5% of the total cost. The estimated cost published in local print media for the West Consolidated Elementary School (from at the board’s April 28, 2015 meeting) was $26,018,925. 5% of that is 1.3 million dollars. Multiply that by how many new schools? It is unknown at this time.
As far as the BoE is concerned, I guess if you have school system under capacity you need to build schools. That’s easy. If you have school system over capacity you don’t need to build more schools. That’s easy too. If you want to build more schools and have overcapacity, you need to close schools to achieve 100% capacity, and then if there is any growth at all, then you have under capacity again and have to build more schools, right? When I call my plumber and ask if I need a plumber…
Will sfL+a agree not to design the new schools and “bow out” due to the conflict?
The Rowan-Salisbury Schools Redistricting Research Posted Here:
