Hello, Rob? Yes. Alright. I guess okay. We're good. Perfect. Good afternoon, everyone. It is that clock is always off. It's 03:02PM, on Tuesday, December 2. This is our second facilities and procurement committee of the school year. I appreciate everyone convening just a few weeks after our first meeting of the year, which, as Dana reminded me, was on the Tuesday of the World Series. That was a game that Dodgers lost, but obviously we know the outcome of that series. So, and and folks hopefully had less traffic to compete with than during a Dodger
game. We have a packed agenda and wanna be respectful of folks' time and try to try to get out of here and get to public comment a bit before 05:00. Thanks to those of you who are here on our committee, who are joining virtually. I know that, my colleagues on the board, miss Ortiz Franklin is joining remotely, and then miss Hendy Newbill will be, delayed. We had a closed session board meeting, and then she had some board business to take care of, but should be here shortly. And, we also have a few new members of our committee who weren't able to join last time.
So, I'll actually start with quick introductions from, Eric Geier and then I thought Randy was is Randy? He's on is he on? Oh, there you are. There you are. So hi, Randy. And Randy did join, last time in person, but was, wasn't here when we started. So I'll give them both an opportunity to just share their name, kind of their connection to, LA Unified or to this committee, and then we asked the committee at our inaugural meeting, kind of one school facility or space you have a connection with
either from your childhood, from your kids' school experience, and just some some school facility that made an impact in your life one way or another. So we'll start with Harrick. Good afternoon. Thank you, Nick, for, including me on the committee. I apologize that I missed the last go around. I, like to tell people that I grew up basically in LAUSD. My mom was a teacher for, well over, like, twenty five years and then was an assistant principal and then a principal. So, you know, I don't know what people talk about around the the dinner table
growing up. Our discussions was about, inclusion and IEPs and, these kinds of things. So I go well back in LAUSD. I was at Welby Way Elementary School, before moving to a different district. And now my kids are currently at Castle Heights Elementary School where, my dad had actually attended decades and decades ago. So, I I appreciate the opportunity to participate on the committee and, you know, bring some of my previous experience in local government and, whatnot to the table.
Great. Thank you, Eric. And, Randy, I know you joined us but didn't have a chance to introduce yourself last time. So I'll let you do that now. Sure. Randy Johnson. I'm a developer. I retired back, in January, and then, Mayor Bass asked, both, Steve Soboroff and myself to see if we could help with the recovery efforts. That didn't turn out so well, but the, I stayed with the, the Palisades, because the the opportunity to help people, is, they need help, you know, and, this is
what we kinda do. So, I was, spent thirty years on, Playa Vista developing that, And if I had to do it all over to do again instead of a k through five school, I would have allocated the land to make it at least k through eight. Didn't have enough land to do a high school, but the difference that that made, and that's a LAUSD, school. It was huge, you know, for the community. So, wanna see what I can do to help.
I've always been perplexed on why the schools cost so much to build. And I totally understand the state architect and the process and and the two and a half times, but, even with that, it's it's just mind blowing to see some of these cost. But any any anyhoo, that's it. Happy to, give my 2¢. Thanks, Randy. Appreciate your contribution, Excuse me. And for joining the committee. And also Randy was helpful in the weeks after the fire, the, you know, week
of the fire and after the fires. In January, we were on Zooms and really just pulling people together to to help with the temporary relocation and then also with the Palihai rebuild. And Randy was, you know, critical to to getting that Sears, building ready for Palihai. So thank you, Randy. I think I'm gonna use my powerful clicker. So the purpose of this committee, kind of just as a segue from what Randy was saying is why do things cost so much is to examine district facilities and procurement processes and projects to promote public transparency and awareness.
The committee will identify barriers and make recommendations to streamline and improve current policies and practice. Today's agenda, we have welcome and introductions. We have a fire recovery update. We have the MGT report discussion, which is not a pres a new presentation, but just an opportunity because we were rushed last time to kind of have the committee dive into that independent analysis of the district's construction program that gets some of those questions, and looks at comparison districts and peer entities. Then a deeper dive into one of those projects that I always find cost way
too much than they should, which are shade structures which tie into the district's climate resilience goals but also just, you know, I'll I'll get on my soapbox more when we get to that agenda but should cost, you know, a fraction, maybe a tenth of what I what I think they actually do. And then we'll get to our public comment. So just a reminder for folks of our previous recommendations and one of the things that we're doing in this committee over the course of a few years is really trying to hone in depth over breadth in a way and, try to make some changes as we've been doing with specification reviews or this MGT study as opposed to
just having a myriad of proposals and then kind of moving on to other issues, really trying to push the envelope here. So our fire recovery update last month, we had miss Ida Claire, who's the state architect here, and she talked about their role at the division of state architects and some of the work they did, in expediting processes, and waiving certain requirements for the fire recovery. And we talked a little bit about, well, what if we just expedited those processes and waive those requirements across the board? The the work that we did to to relocate students within eight days for the
elementary school and within a few weeks for the high school and the work we're doing now, whether it's the interim campus that's at Marquez, which is up the one on the screen, or the the timeline to get kids back in the Palisades as soon as we can. Wouldn't be possible without the the work of the facilities team. So I do, wanna thank them, you know, as often as I can, publicly and privately, for the incredible work they're doing while also pushing them, as they know I will, to do things more quickly, and and more efficiently. And, but I do just wanna take this opportunity to say, you know, as we
come up almost on a year of the fire, and we're gonna have at the board meeting a superintendent and board report on a year since the fire and just do some public recognition and gratitude of district employees, city employees, parents, community members who work so hard to support students and families in the Palisades. It is exciting to have be one of the first institutions back, in the Palisades. I was actually there on on Thanksgiving for the turkey trot, and it was nice to see a lot of our families who are either at Marquez or at Pali Elementary or at Pali High, including Pali High students who were helping to work the
event. But we're going to turn it over to the team to share about where we are, and then give the committee an opportunity to ask questions or give their feedback. So I think, Isam will be, our presenter. Hello? Oh, there we go. Woah. I'll start over. Good afternoon. Assam Dhadul, director of facilities planning and development. Thank you for this opportunity to present an update to the Palisades fire recovery. So just a little bit of history before we get into too much of an update, but, ultimately, as we all know, back in January 2025, the Palisades fire caused
extensive damage to three of our schools here at LAUSD, Marquez Elementary School, Palisades Elementary School, and Palisades High School. In 2025, fortunately, with bond funds, we were able to front fund and come up with $600,000,000 in bond funds to, rebuild all three of these campuses. And so the goal being that we're going to use bond funds to start these projects while seeking, working with insurance and FEMA to recover, funds. And so we've been actively actively working with both FEMA and insurance, on that recovery
of those funds as we continue to progress. Design is underway, and you'll see as I show you some slides, of where we are with the design process for the recovery for all three schools of the, buildings that were, damaged. And for the buildings that were, that are intact, we're going through the the industrial cleaning process and getting those buildings repaired so that they can be returned to the campuses. Construction in general, and I know we'll talk a lot about schedule, but, is anticipated to take about three years for the permanent rebuild. So a little bit about each campus in terms of where they are, or where they went after the fire.
So Marquez Elementary School, immediately after the fire, was operating at Norris Dairy Elementary School. And then, fortunately, we were able to get interim housing, placed on the campus, and we're, very happy with the progress we made of getting the campus reopened at Marquez Elementary School, where they will remain until the permanent facilities are completed, right adjacent to it. And I'll show you some slides in a second on that. Palisades Elementary School, they are currently at Brentwood Science Magnet where they will remain, until the permanent reconstruction of the entire campus.
That campus is much smaller. And so, you know, based on community engagement that was done, they determined that it was best to stay at Palisades or sorry, at Brentwood Science Magnet until the permanent rebuild was completed. And then Palisades Charter High School, has reopened at the Sears, building in Santa Monica. They did a temporary relocation there, until we're able to complete the renovation of the existing buildings, the remediation of the existing buildings, which we're hoping, they'll be able to return after winter break. They have not cleared all of the environmental clearances yet, so we're still working on
that. And we're gonna continue to work with that community to inform them, as to when it's safe to return to those buildings. And the permanent reconstruction will occur, over the next three years. So a little bit about schedule. And if you've seen any of these slides before, you've seen that we've, taken what is typically a five year schedule, for school construction buildings, and and are trying to deliver them in three and a half years. And so right now, we're at the, design phase. We're in the construction document design phase.
So we're our architects and engineers are in the heavy drafting of, the engineering documents that will go into constructing these buildings. We are actually tracking, when we developed this, we started in May 2025, the design, and we were anticipating about a twelve month process to get into DSA, the Division of State Architect, to submit drawings. Right now, we're tracking about a month earlier, so we're actually not only on schedule, but we're looking to exceed that by at least a month, to get into DSA by April on all three of these projects.
We've been working very closely with DSA, probably on a biweekly, basis. We're having biweekly meetings with them where we are going through the drawings so that when the first time we submit to them, they're not looking at it for the first time and they're able to, meet this expedited review period of about four months that we're working with. Typically, a DSA review process can take anywhere from six to nine months on us on any of these projects that are of this size. In this case, DSA has been working very closely with us to expedite that. At the same time, another way we're looking to to expedite is with the construction
bid. We're going to be bidding this project at the same time that we're in DSA so that we can take advantage of getting contractors engaged early on so that once we do have DSA approved drawings, we're able to move that project a lot quicker into getting, a notice to proceed to construction. With that, we will look to start construction by the 2027 and complete by the 2028. We did have the pleasure of meeting with some, folks from some of the private schools in the area. And so we've what we've what we've learned from that, and looking at their timeline,
is that we're able to our timeline is very similar in terms of the design phase and the construction phase in terms of the actual timing. Because we are a public agency and they're private, they're able to take advantage of certain things that we cannot. So, for example, we have to follow the division of state architect for approval. They go to the city of LA. That process takes a little bit longer. Also, they're allowed to proceed with, splitting the packages and starting some of the construction work a little bit earlier where we are not able to in terms of getting steel up, and running sooner.
In addition to that, we have to go through public contract code. We're a public agency, so we have to do public bidding, whereas, obviously, private entities. But with that said, we're looking at every way possible to expedite, and not only meet the schedule, but even try to, accelerate it where possible. So, a little bit about Marquez' return to school. As I mentioned earlier, the campus, reopened on September 30. It was a great day, to see the kids go back to to campus. And, it took a lot. It took a village to get, everything, including our partners, at the city, the DWP,
etcetera to, get the the campus opened. So I'm gonna walk through each of the three schools, just in a little bit of more detail and share some renderings of, the future, project. The this is Marquez Elementary School. The first phase of that project, is completed. This is where we brought in the interim housing. We opened the school. Phase two, is the permanent rebuild. We're building approximately 20 classrooms, multipurpose room library. Ultimately, all the entire campus, is being rebuilt. You can see here the general site plan of how we're laying laying out the
campus, along Marquez Avenue. Total project budget is approximately $200,000,000 And as I showed earlier, we're anticipating finishing the buildings by the 2028. And then at that point, we would remove the interim housing and build back the playground, on the west side of the campus. It's just a blow up of it. And you can see here just a couple of renderings. So this is Marquez, Elementary School as you're looking on Marquez Avenue looking at the multipurpose building and, admin. Oops. Sorry. And this is a courtyard view, of the existing of the new buildings that we're
planning to build. Palisades Elementary School, approximately a $135,000,000 to restore the existing buildings, which is the existing main building as well as the cafeteria, and then the addition of 14 classrooms with general general, TK and kindergarten and specialty spaces as well as a multipurpose room. And then, obviously, any infrastructure that's needed. As I mentioned earlier, the the construction schedule would be 2027 start and then completion by the 2028. And then here's just some views.
Here's an interior courtyard courtyard view and Palisades, from an aerial view, off of the main street there. Okay. Last but not least, Palisades Charter High School where we've got, the phase one. So we've got the, temporary village that we call it, which is about 30 classrooms and portables that we place on the baseball field. That portion of the work is complete. We're still going through the remaining, cleaning of the existing buildings, to get those ready for the return of, to campus.
And then the phase two, schedule would be for us to build back 30 classrooms. As you can see there, the this rectangle in the white, is the location of where the fire occurred, and we're placing the building right back in that same location. And we're working with the school on that as well as the replacement of the track and field. And then, ultimately, the baseball field will be recovered after, the new building is built and the portable buildings will be removed. We anticipate, same schedule as before, first quarter twenty twenty seven, q four twenty twenty
eight, and then the baseball field will be recovered, shortly thereafter. And then you can just see here, just a a site plan just kind of zoomed in as to where the location of the new building is going to go. They're dashed in the light blue. And then, obviously, the work in the baseball field and the football field with a small new field building because there were some, damage done to some of the buildings out there. You yes. You can. I'm actually done. So this is the last slide, which is just a beautiful view of the new Palisades Charter High School, building. And I will now open it to questions.
Great. Thank you. Well timed. Appreciate that. I know I have some questions and comments, but we'll start with the committee. So miss Cunningham. And this may be just a very small detail, but, I believe Palisades was in the process of redoing their softball field that was combined with the football field prior to the fires. It was it's a really not good place to play as a softball parent. I know from my family personally. So and I just noted on here you have baseball fields in plural, and maybe that's just a slight typo. Are you, planning to make a a softball field?
If there's an s, then it's a mistake. There is one baseball field that's that we're placing what was there, but we would build it back to district standards. So it makes sure that we're meeting the district standards, but it would be just one baseball field. That's one baseball field. Okay. So, yeah, I would just, it would be great for some, girls sports always get left off. So making sure that you have a plan for that. It was shared on the football field, which is definitely not ideal. But if you're gonna be building back things, it'd be great to keep that in mind. Will do. Thank you. I'll also note too for folks. So the, the two elementary schools, Marquez and Palley, are affiliated charters, which means they're
just, you know, for all intents and purposes, district run schools. Pali High is an independent charter that is on a district campus and was a kind of a relatively unique model in terms of a conversion. So some of those decisions have been made by Pali High's leadership and their board in partnership with facilities who's executing in our office. But so I think that's a great point and some of that advocacy for those who are interested in certain things related to Pali High specifically. I would encourage folks to talk to the school leadership as well. Yes. Miss Greenspan.
I'm curious. Was there a type of programming that, you know that word? Yes. Yes. Okay. Programming of what the the needs are of these new buildings. Or did you just build what you what was there before? Or No. Absolutely. There was a huge programming effort. Sorry. Did you join me? And I just wondered who was involved and Yeah. So, we hired licensed architects for all three projects. Our first step in doing that was to determine what was lost and what needed to be built back. So with district staff internally and working with each of the three schools and the
local, region West, we determined how much space needed to be built back. So in some cases so for Marquez, for example, they had many more classrooms than they actually needed. There were a lot of empty classrooms. And so instead of building back, obviously, empty classrooms in portables, most of them were in portables, we're obviously not building back portables. We're building back permanent buildings. So there's a huge, programming effort to make sure we were building back the space that they're going to need, going forward. Wondering, like, public comment or I mean, when these buildings were built, education and life
was different than it is now. You know, so I'm just was that considered? It just seemed to go, it seemed to have gone fast to already be in design if Yes. This whole project has gone very fast, but there's been a robust community engagement process for all three of these schools. From the onset of the fire, we were out there not only providing updates as to where the students are gonna go in terms of temporary housing, but also the future planning of the project. So that was happening probably since February.
Okay. And there were some contemplation of other, grade configuration. There were some interest around doing span schools or like and so those were the conversations like, mister Adul Adul was saying. We're doing quickly because we have some, you know, parents who are current parents including some in the audience have but also thinking about we're not just building for the next few years, but for the next, ideally, hundred years. And, but I appreciate the question and that's ongoing. Yeah. Oh, I just one more so, with Pali High, so you're moving them back now
from Sears? So the plan is to move them back from Sears. Correct. So we're working right now. Facilities is working on, getting the site ready. So we're going through each building, making sure we're getting them cleared by our office of environmental health and safety so that they're cleared to return safely to those buildings. We're targeting after winter break, but they have not been cleared as of yet, and so we're continuing to work with our office of environmental health and safety to determine when it's safe to return. And we're working with the school to make sure that they're informed as well as the parents and the community.
We actually have a community meeting set up for mid December to just provide an update regardless of whether they're going ready to move back or not ready to move back right after winter break But sometimes it's hard to an update so that they at least know and can plan for what's gonna happen after. Sometimes it's hard to be at a school with construction. Yes. But long term, the the Palisades Charter High School administration has asked that they they they do return and not stay at the Sears site for the next three years while we're, in the process of finishing the design and construction. So they wanna return and they're happy they're okay with being there being construction in
that area. And it's somewhat isolated from the rest of the campus somewhat. There will be some trucks going in and out. But But you raise a good point too about the the individual needs of the three schools. And then over the course of the last year, almost a year, you know, Pali Elementary School had a better temporary location in the minds of most of that community. So they're staying there until the rebuild is done whereas Marquez, was eager to get back. And the way that Marquez is kind of multi tiered, we were able to do the temporary campus there. Well, construction's going. It would have been harder on Pali.
It's but the acreage is about half or two thirds. So, yeah, mister Rodriguez. So, I actually participated in the, the move for Marquez. I worked that Saturday. It was a long day. I did not do the Sears one, but a lot of guys that I work. So, just real quick, I'm a stock worker at procurement for truck, operations. I load the supply trucks and trailers that go out to our schools every day, so that's what I do. I'm not a driver. However, I would did wanna point out that besides that Marquez move, in the future when these are ready to go, we've got our own fleet of I don't know
if if everybody's aware that we have a fleet of vehicles. It's a 150 different sized trucks and trailers broken down on various, different types of reefers, regular ones, bobtails. So we're able to do that and do and facilitate that. And in addition to that, with the with the Spra Annex, we also have some of the furniture there that we can literally just drive down from Pico Rivera to Downtown LA, load up, and do it. That's how we actually did the Sears move. We actually did that in one day. So I just wanted to point that out.
And there's actually a video that we have that we made that was put together on from the Marquez move that Nick's gonna be able to view, next Tuesday when he does the walk through. If you like after that, we'll see if we can get it. You could present it to the rest of the board possibly. I would love to. And I was gonna say a week from today, 05:30AM, I will be ringing folks to do a walk through to see, kind of the procurement for the warehouse and also that spa facility that that mister Rodriguez just alluded to. So And then I did have one more question Please. About Marquez. You mentioned that, you've there was there was excess classrooms or some or so if
are those classrooms gonna be rebuilt or no? No. So when we, before the fire, there were 34 classrooms on-site. A lot of those classrooms were in portables. We're building back 20 total classrooms plus administration space, the all the core facilities like food services, multipurpose library, etcetera. So the school doesn't need the 34 classrooms, and so we're building back what the school needs now and going forward. Okay. That that was gonna be their part because it was how was how was that space thing gonna be utilized? But if that's okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Other questions, comments? Nick Nick? Oh, yes. Randy. Yeah. So I quoted the voice of the the Wizard of Oz, mister Johnson. Yeah. Alright. So a couple couple of questions. When when the homes are being rebuilt in the Palisades, they're gonna be required to use the the seven a requirements, class a roof, defensible space, dual pane tempered windows, hardy plank or stucco siding, basically hardening the target, if you would. What is the school what have you guys done to harden these buildings?
And then I have a series of questions. How much new construction are you actually doing for the 130 or whatever million for this particular one? And then how dependent are you on DWP, CLA engineering public works, in wet dry utilities? I'll start with that. Great questions. So, I'll answer the first one first, which is the in term of fire resiliency, we are following chapter seven a as well in terms of the fire code, because
of the areas is a high fire zone for obviously. In addition to that, we've for all three architects, we've worked on them with resiliency plan. And so each of the three architects has actually been doing workshops with us with the school district and with each other, actually. It's kind of unique. We're bringing all three architects to come up with ideas for each of the campuses individually on how they can make sure that we're, engaging in terms of the resiliency of these buildings, and the site going forward in terms of the type of landscaping, the distance of the landscape from the buildings, the type of building materials that we're
using. So for all three sites, resiliency is obviously a huge factor, and all three of our architects are heavily engaged in that. Your second question, I believe, was in terms of the square footage of what we're buying with each of these, sites. So for Yes. For Palisades Elementary School, it's approximately 29,000 square feet of new construction, plus any of the remediation and work that we have to do with the existing buildings, plus it will also receive, you know, full the entire site, in terms of the asphalt and paving and playground will be brand new.
So all that 29,000 feet, what's the cost on that? So the total cost of Marquez Elementary School I can go to the slide. Thank you. So approximately $202,000,000, but that includes, the interim housing that was put in initially as well. So that's both the phase one and the phase two. Yeah. Because, I mean, that that's $7,000 a foot. I mean, that is, that's a choker. And that's it is one. Total to just just to be clear, that's total project cost, and that's not the construction cost. That that includes hard and soft cost. Okay. Alrighty.
And then, we I guess we could all chat about that later, about the cost. But the the is it anticipated that FEMA or HUD is gonna be reimbursing everything on this? Great question. So our, first money is, obviously, we're putting in the bond funds, to front fund this. The insurance would be the next money in, and so, ultimately, we're working with our insurance company. Thankfully, we've had a robust, insurance coverage on this, property. So so we hope to recover as much as possible.
I don't know if we'll recover all, but as much as as feasible. And then FEMA would be the last money, and we're actively working with FEMA and Cal OES. We've actually engaged a consultant to help us, work with FEMA in terms of our FEMA application and our insurance. What what consultant is that? I mean, Citi is using IEM. We've we've hired Ernst and Young. Good. Good. And then the the last question was really your dependency on the stuff that's outside of your control, the, city of LA, DWP, DWP, their coordination with the rest of
the departments isn't the greatest. And, you know, the one thing that we try to get them to do is on the water supply. What are you doing differently to make sure this never happens again? Have you guys gotten into those conversations with them? So, I guess, I I I think I heard two questions. One is in terms of our reliance on other agencies, absolutely, we rely on DWP to provide the power for these sites. And so we actively work with DWP early, and we engage them very early on, in the process to make sure that we're providing getting the proper transformer, etcetera, that
we need. In regards to I've what was your second question? Just on the water supply issue. From what standpoint? So so, yeah, we'll we'll work with DWP as well in terms of connections to to the existing water supply in the street. And then the buildings themselves will be sprinklered as necessary, you know, per, DSA requirements. Okay. And then the the processing right now, the architects, you're saying the contract documents are gonna be in a position to get a building permit, by April? We're gonna be submitting to yes. We'll be submitting to the division of state architects in, I think it's March for
two of the sites and April for the for one of the sites. And so by April, we'll have all of them submitted to the division of state architects. And then at that point, we'll work with DSA to get out of DSA hopefully within four months, if not less. So the idea would be to have approved plans, approximately four months after the submittal in April. And and could you get all the procurement, all the RFQs, r RFPs, all that stuff out of the way in the during that time? So what we can do is we're we are gonna run concurrent. So we're gonna run concurrent with, best value procurement process, which means we're gonna shortlist
our contractors during that process while we're in the in DSA, which means we can make up some of that time of the, of the bidding process. Once we've shortlisted and have DSA approved drawings, we can then provide those approved drawings for the actual pricing once we've got a shortlisted, shortlisted bidders. And then that then we come to the board for approval, and then we can start construction shortly thereafter. So last question. Sorry to hog the time here, but, the last question was, the governor and the mayor issued, orders basically that, in effect saying that if you're within zoning, you get
a hall pass with the coastal commission. If you're, same thing with, CEQA. Mhmm. Is there anything that they could do that could make your life easier, where you could, you know, fast track it even to make sure you hit these dates. Yeah. So, thankfully, they they did pass that ordinance, which allowed us to, fast track in the sense that we're exempt from CEQA based on our, project description as well as exempt from Coastal Commission. So that allows us to move, very, very fast and not have to go through
that step. Good. Good. Alright. Thank you. Thank you, Randy. Very helpful questions. Eric. First of all, I really appreciate this accelerated timeline. I don't think we see, things move this quickly very often, and and I'd really, like seeing the the, you know, dedication to that. I got the sense, from what you were saying that, some of the time savings is made up in the, bidding, timing, overlaying the DSA approval. And in that vein, it's sort of impossible for me to not think about this
in terms of our next item. And and so I I guess to kinda piggyback on on a previous question, how are we making sure that as we're getting these approvals and these details of the projects are changing that that is getting worked into the bids that we're getting and they're bidding on the most current and up to date, you know, projects with with all of the nuances in them as opposed to something here that changes once they
get into the construction process. Yeah. No. It's a it's a good question. So what we'll what we'll do is we'll actually when we shortlist, we might provide them a copy of the drawings, but we're not asking them to price it. So from what at the beginning, when we're going to go out and say we need bidders to come out and we're gonna based based off of qualifications, we're going to score you and decide who's going to be shortlisted to then give us a price. So we you know, you can let's just say you had five bids and you narrow that down to or five proposers. You can narrow that down to three just based on qualifications without a formal price
at that point. And so they could have the copy of the drawing so that they understand what the project is, understand what the potential schedule might be, and they can help us identify how long they think it'll take. But then in addition to that, once we have the DSA approved drawings, we now have a short list of bidders. So we have the three prequalified bidders, and that's what they're going to price. It's only the DSA approved drawings. They're not gonna give us a price on anything that's not hasn't been formally stamped. Steve? And I should have said Steve Newton was on the committee in prior years. He missed our first meeting, but he's been an active participant.
So thanks, and Steve floor is yours. Yeah. Just one short question here. It looks like over 50 classrooms were installed. Were they modular, pre engineered, or stick built? What what were they? The interim housing, they're all modular. Oh, okay. Yeah. Like, portable classrooms. And how are they procured? Through, So we have a contract with mobile modular. The district has a contract. So we went out to bid, got a mobile a modular contractor that can provide them as needed for any of our projects. And so mobile modular, with that contract, we were able to execute, and they moved
very quickly after the fire to provide us the portables at both Palisades High School and at Marquez Elementary School. Okay. Thank you. Other questions, comments? I'll note we got a few questions ahead of time that I'll I'll forward to you about cost specifically for Pali High, cost of the temporary Pali campus, any cost savings offset by leaving the Sears Building, kind of the rent, for lack of a better word, that Pali High pays to L Unified. So I'll I'll forward those to you, but just wanna acknowledge that we that we received some of those questions, ahead of time.
Thank you for the presentation and and to the committee for their questions, many of which were ones I was gonna get to. You know, a few notes. One, thank you, Randy, also for pointing out even though we have hard and soft costs like the square footage, that is kind of gonna lead into our next report around, diving into MGT, but also just the, the timeline. You know, so actually, I think, Randy, it was you who connected us with Kelly Farrell at Gensler for the Sears project for Palley High. Kelly Gensler is doing the village school, which is a independent school literally next door
to Pali Elementary. And their publicly stated timeline is, January 2028. And ours is December 2028, which would mean, you know, January 2029 for a kind of repopulation. And I will say to the point that was made by Eric and others, like, a year delay to the private sector in general is impressive compared to three, four, ten year delays. So credit where it's due, but, you know, the superintendent and I made commitments to these parents, some of whom are here to do everything we can to beat or match the private school timelines.
And so some of that is alluded to in what Randy asked around CEQA and, Coastal Commission, but others are, things that, you know, public bidding and should we have an extension of the government governor's order right when the fires happened around waiving public contracting rules. And how we had miss Claire here from DSA and, you know, I my understand Is that one of the challenges is that DSA approves projects in totality, whereas the private sector can go piece by piece. So I want to acknowledge that miss Toks and mister Abdul have had conversations at
our request with Gensler about this, And it seems like our construction timelines are similar, but it's some of those, you know, shovels in the ground will be later. So I think we still have an outstanding next step from you all to let us know or the board or me in in particular know what are those existing things that right now are preventing us from going faster, but I like to think about, you know, yet. It hasn't changed yet or as of this moment, and we're gonna at least ask the state for more relief. And so can you mention a few of those things that were discussed?
And then I know, like, the specific follow ups, which are outside of my area of expertise, I know we're gonna be talking to the governors governors team, I believe, Thursday on some of these. So if you can just share some of those things that would lead to that 12 or eleven month delay. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, when we looked at what, what Village is doing versus what we're doing is ultimately, they can go ahead and start construction sooner on an on an early package. Right? So they're working with the city of LA, which allows them to, ultimately design only the steel structure itself, so foundation and steel, and then proceed by hiring a contractor
and then moving forward with just that piece of construction while the rest of the design is proceeding, whereas the division of state architect does not allow that. The DSA does not allow you to only design just the structure and the, the ground itself. It must be a complete project. And so, therefore, there's that piece. So that's that's one big step in in terms of how they'll be able to start sooner. The other piece is that they're able to, as a private entity, ultimately pick who they want to use, as a general contractor whereas we have a public process. So that allows them to do, really, they can select the arc the contractor that
they wanna proceed with for that early package without really facing a huge risk of having a different contractor for the second package. So if we were to do it, even if we were allowed to by DSA to have two separate packages, one for steel and one for the rest of the, buildings, you the issue that you would face is would we really want to have two separate contractors or be in a position where you're bidding two separate pieces of the project and then, finger pointing potentially with two general contractors. That's helpful. And I'll note too.
There are there are reasons, whether it's the field act and, like, the standard we want our public schools to be the safest in an emergency or public contracting with public money. I mean, these there are reasons for this. But I think given the emergency nature, you know, we have commitments from the governor all the way down on waiving everything they can. And so, you know, the commitment we've made and that I'll say again publicly now is that we're gonna continue to ask about those things and at least kind of look kick the tires on seeing if DSA will approve in chunks or have some of the, public contracting rules amended, if you will.
Now we also then have to make sure we can get reimbursed by FEMA if we do that. So it is a complicated process, but it's one that we're looking into. And I'll get some of those specifics from you so that we can ask. Great. Yes. In screen share. But that's also what Gensler is saying. Like, the reality that they're gonna meet by a year isn't always, you know, they might it it Fair point too. This is what they're saying publicly and what we're saying publicly, and so we wanna try to reduce that delta. But, yes. You know, right now, Mark, you know, the temporary location was faster than the independent schools. Marquez is back, but we also know that, you know, you know, especially to the
parents of whom are sitting in the front row, you know, that every every day that's going by is a day they're not back in that temp, that permanent structure. But fair point. Just like making sure we're planning not for tomorrow, but for a hundred years from now and and understanding what their timelines are. So really appreciate this. We'll continue in this committee and, like I said, on the board to kind of have these updates, but, you know, appreciate the work that the district has done. I think when we do talk to families, the school district's response has been one of the more comforting and bright spots since January, and we appreciate the teams that
are doing that. So thank you. This kind of was a nice segue into the next it's not a presentation, but an opportunity for further discussion, which is, you know, we had this committee had requested and it was aligned with the superintendent's goals an independent analysis of the district's construction program to look at costs and timelines, and that was done by MGT. We received the report, like, I think the night before this meeting, and so most folks didn't have a chance to review it. And so we wanted to just have an opportunity not to have the district present
again, but have Alix and the team answer questions, around, things that the committee might have seen in the report. I'll note, and I'll save my questions for the end, but, you know, two consistent differences that were acknowledged in the last meeting were lower bid participation. Many of our solicitations for, you know, multi like, 150, 200,000,000 projects all the way down are only getting one or two bidders. And so is that competitive? Are they bidding you know, is is it not malicious or illegal price fixing, but,
like, you know, is that really a competitive process? And then two, which Eric alluded to, is the number of change orders. So when this board approves an initial project, then the final costs are significantly higher. So I'll ask some specific questions, but I first wanna turn turn it over to the committee for questions or feedback or thoughts on that MGT report. Can I make a statement, please? Please. So I believe I would I just want to make sure that people don't have a misunderstanding. So we, facilities, are the subject of this report. We didn't manage this report.
I know there was some misunderstanding previously stated in more than one public forum. The second thing is, as far as I'm aware, there's only two projects that had two bidders. Which were Fairfax, Idaho? Fairfax and Hamilton. We had three bidders. They pulled one pulled out. We rebid it. We had two bidders. Right. And Hamilton, $500,000,000 project almost. But what I'll say is, I don't know that Well anyone That was two projects though. Okay. Well, I the the report notes the the report which was done independently notes low
bidder participation as one of the challenges. I don't know that this committee had a misunderstanding. I think the report was done, but I'll clarify if we need to, independently. But it is the district and district facilities specifically who are responding to the report. That's right. What they agree with, what they disagree with, and then most importantly, what will change, as a result. So Yep. But but, yes, this report, you know, that's up there was done by an independent agency at the request of the district. And I assume everyone, you know, who wasn't here last time got a copy of the materials I presented last time.
Correct. And unfortunately, talked, like, for forty five minutes, and people missed the game. Sorry, Nick. That's why we lost that game. Questions or comments, from the committee? Yes. Go ahead. Yeah. Regarding the limited number of bidders, and you did, clarify some of that. I was wondering whether this is historical in nature. Has has it been, have we had low bidding for a few years? And the reason I bring that up is because I went to an event, a few years ago. I think it was in Santa Fe Springs, and it was for vendor it was
a contractor vendor, event. And it was a room this big, and it was standing room only, really. And there was primes and subcontractors in there like crazy soliciting, information from them, having them fill out paperwork and so forth. So I'm just wondering, you know, what happened as a result of the So so first of all, we do have a limited number of bidders in the sense that we had, like, six to eight consistently bidding on the largest projects. And then we did expand and get a few new ones in the last few
years who have bid. So for everybody's comfort, knowing what we face next year with the number of bids we're bringing forward, including the three at Pali, we had an internal meeting within facilities, and we have one with procurement next week. Because we do work hard to bring in new bidders, but we're gonna have to be very conscious of making an effort starting next week about reaching out to these
bidders to make sure we have enough bidders, not just for these three projects, but for the others we're bidding. And so we're doing a study on how much are we bidding, what kinds of projects. Our concern is the biggest projects like the penalties. Smaller projects have bidders. Roofing, we've improved our roofing, bidding competition, which we had challenges with. So both procurement and facilities have worked hard in the last three plus years for
very consistent outreach to the bidding community. It's not just the general contractors. It's also the major subcontractors, mechanical, especially, limited number of bidders. And, you know, Christina and I and Matt and others go to AGC. We bring our, firms in to talk to us about our challenges. We've had the subcontractors who do the work on the, first increment of work, the utility work, come in and talk to us about how to improve due diligence, which
we've changed all our policies on and our practices on. So, there's a lot of work in LA. K. Well, because of the limited number of bidders, again, perhaps, as an LEA that we are, of course, maybe we should be looking at using more buying contracts, CMAS, f triple c, which, of course, minimize the RFP creation and so forth. So and I realize that you do that on smaller bids and so forth, but have you thought about doing that on the larger ones? We have used that methodology in the past.
It has a lot of challenges. One on long term projects, the equipment that we might buy and pay to warehouse and pay to insure sometimes is obsolete by the time we need it or there's a better product in the marketplace. We have discussed this before Mhmm. Mister Newton. Yeah. We haven't abandoned the idea. We're always open when we face a challenge. And I think, when I get to my second part of my presentations today, there's an opportunity to look on a smaller project at buying, en masse two or three
models and having them in storage at wind is. We'll talk about that later. Yeah. Because I've seen in some smaller districts, such as Downey and, Fullerton, I believe, and maybe El Rancho that in fact, you know, buying purchasing pre engineered buildings on CMAS contracts or whatever has netted them, situations where they've had them installed in nine months to a year rather than which, of course, is about 50%, about half the time that it takes to go ahead and go through that whole RFP process and so
forth. So, you know, there's some good good things about that. Have used, I distinguish portable and modular buildings, just so you know. We are very successful with portable buildings as as witnessed in these projects. We have contracts in place and we have we're always advancing the information about what we're gonna need in a year, six months so they know what we're gonna need so they can be prepared. And we've used modular buildings too. Okay.
Thank you. Miss Greenspan. Hi. Hi. I think I asked the same question last time we're here is, how effective was or, impactful was this consulting, report for you? Like, did it did you guys learn I feel like the, when I've read this report a couple times, it seems like the number of projects is pretty small, and there's a lot of kind of caveats where, like, there's a lot of change orders,
but some are added. You know, Venice Oh, that's a messed up. Was like we added a baseball field, which isn't really an increase of cost. I mean, it's kind of skewed. I just and some are big and some are small. 10 is such a small, like, in a statistical analysis. So I'm just trying to we spent a lot of money on this on this Well and, again, the choice to do 10 wasn't ours or or or facilities. That's what MGT proposed. And they had to look at a diversification. They asked us for the projects that were completed between '22 and '24.
There were 99 projects. And they went through a number of variations. They were looking for HVAC and roofing, ADA, and then the bigger projects. And I'm just saying, did you get a lot of value? I'm just trying to understand. To me, it seems a little not so impactful. I'm just curious. Is it So Okay. First, I'm gonna start with if you go to page 67. You don't have to do that right now. I I come prepared. Maybe this is probably thinking she's gonna torture me again.
Alright. So many of these things, we were I we either do or we were doing, and I even have a list of what we plan to do in the future. There are three or four of these that I really think more emphasis. The change order issue is the critical issue. Why do we have so many change orders? What what was contributing to that? And there are different stories for different types of projects, and Venice is a classic. Why do we have so many change orders? One one of the things was fencing. One of the things was community pushback on certain portions of the project.
There was a lot of concern from neighbors about where the transformer was placed, So we moved the transformer because they were fearful of the transformer. Was there data? I don't know if there was data, but we we tried on that project on three or four different things to keep our neighbors happy. And that happens on a lot of these projects. It's not the only one. Things like fencing. When we started these projects in 2015, it's a different world.
We added fencing and security on all these projects across the board. We didn't Venice wasn't even a fence site at that time. Things that happen routinely were we started out we were gonna replace roofs on four buildings, and then that we need to do it on a fifth building. We've got the contractors there. Can you get a good price from that contractor? I guess just sorry to interrupt, but to because some of this is like, why in that instance did we not know ahead of time we needed the fifth roof?
Or why did we not do the community engagement early on to figure out where the transformer's gonna go? Well, it was in drawings. It may have been not perceived by the community. There's always stakeholder engagement through the whole process. But I mean, on the roof issue. I mean, it seems like some of those change orders are the district's decision. Well, on some of the bigger projects, Venice or Cleveland would be a good example except that that's not where we had to add a roof. Some of the other ones that we're not looking at, you know, you're four years into construction and you had analyzed it two years before and you had a list
of, roofs that needed to be replaced, you knew it, and then something goes on another building and the water's coming in the building and we're not walking off a site with water coming in the building. So we add it. Sorry, miss Koons. I don't know if you yeah. But, I mean, as I said before, if this reinforces a lot of things we're doing and it reinforces the district to think about things carefully, prioritize them, and then
communicate through a large organization that's been doing bond work for twenty five years. This is important. We have other people telling us these are important, so you need to look at how you're gonna change. So it's not just coming from me or it's not coming from Christina. It's coming from others who say these things are important. So I see it as a very useful tool. Did I know most of it? Yeah. I did. So do you wanna know the things that I still need to do? I was just so I was just gonna say about the change orders.
Is is is there are there changes that you're making now about Oh, so we've done several things. So we put a task force together across all the departments within facilities. So working together, identifying critical, and and looking at all the patterns, looking at the records we have. Much of that came down to two things, early due diligence, which is written about in the report. We expanded our due diligence checklist. We also expanded it through the design project.
So we're doing it before we come to the board with the scope, and then over time, we're still double checking. In design build, we have some more flexibility to do some with the contractor. We did not use a lot of destructive testing because we didn't like interrupting classrooms or having possible asbestos or mold or contaminations in our classrooms. We didn't used to do that. We do that more now. We have opportunities. We know where to look. Asbestos is another challenge, so we started using allowances, to protect ourselves, and I think
I discussed this last time. Often, in the underground utilities, even the irrigation lines, we would find asbestos because something had broken and had been repaired and they had wrapped it. We didn't know that was routine and that's how people were fixing things. So now we carry allowances because you can't predict that. We don't know where that is. As builts are sketchy. My favorite line, never met a sewer line in the right place or the same size that the drawing said, but, you know so we've learned through that.
So we've learned to use allowances. The other thing with asbestos, studies and reports is that's the next thing on my list. How can we improve that? We do that internally, and so that's the hottest thing on my item. Confirming k KPI. So, you know, the report says you need to have KPIs and we have 40 some metrics. So we're about to in February, we're gonna start doing our big annual review of every single bond project, every schedule, every budget. So I'm gonna set up a matrix of what are the critical things you need
to know if you're in this stage of your project. Do you have change orders? Have you increased scope? Where are you? And set margins so we can look at that because we do work on every single project over a three or four month period. So why not just make sure in that process? So I'm gonna ask for reports and get the reports. And then say, come into my office and tell me why you have this problem. And how can we take that problem, make sure we don't have it on the next one? I have one more thing. Sorry.
Sure. One when they were here, I I asked them if they were gonna talk about, the RFQ or RFP, whatever you'd call it, process. I don't do they talk about that or any improvements for that or including change order kind of some scope or caveats with the contractors with that at that? Oh, okay. So there are two or three things. One is and they mentioned it in here. Do you build more contingency in? So here's one thing we did when we first did these very large projects. We put in above standard industry rule of thumb contingency because they were 70 to
a 100 year old project sites. There was a lot of pushback for that with good reason. A lot of pushback. So we took a lot of contingency out. We still had some contingency during design and some construction and some for God knows what would ever happen. Right? But we did cut that back. When you look at the first big 11 projects, they basically came in probably a lot closer to what we originally budgeted. I don't mind taking that up because if you put that money in the budget, they're gonna spend it.
So why not wait till you have an issue and you really need to spend it for the extra roof? We don't wanna guilt anything. You don't wanna do anything right. We don't need to paint anything gold. So it is a way to keep con contingencies at reasonable rates, but face the fact that you will learn something and you at some point, and you may need to Okay. Add a change order. But change orders I think the last time I think there was a misunderstanding.
Change orders aren't like certainly, there are mistakes people make. Right? There are mistakes. There are errors in our missions. There are a contractor not doing something right. That that is standard in construction. But I think the real issue is, change orders aren't necessarily bad if you pay a good price for something you need. Fair. But the report noted that half the projects had more than 50 change orders, which I mean, I'm not the expert on this committee, but it seems that it's not
now. Is that what it said? I think it's worth reiterating. Noted that five of the projects reviewed had more than 50 change orders. Right. And I think that's what we need to address. Right. I think that's miss Green's family. Yeah. And we are addressing it. I'm gonna just wanted to to add to that is I don't think 50 change orders on a project is, above and beyond an industry standard, and I think miss Greenspan agrees. So I think that would be one of the questions on the report is, what
are those 50 change orders for? If it is aerosome emissions from the architect, then there's, you know, lessons to be learned there. If it's because you found, you know, black pipe behind the classroom walls because you couldn't knock every classroom wall door wall open while school is in construction and you're planning this project, then that's a way that you can fairly pay a contractor to address that work without stopping construction, going back out to bid, and delaying a project.
Right? So a change order to me you know, there's there's a variation of change orders for those of us in the industry. But the mechanism of change order and why we have a very careful policy depending on the size of that change order and who has to approve it, is that a way that the contractor continue to do work so that you don't have to stop a project and rebid it for all these other things that you find out? And, really, all the data shows that we're we're, I mean, yeah, 50 is a
lot for some projects. But if you look at the kinds of projects and if you look at every chart, we're not we're not out of the realm of what is normal or within industry standard. And then, right, we're not. I mean, there's a project here in Venice that they were beyond 15% in the change order, but they got a baseball field, they got new fencing, and we moved to transformer and the sewer line wasn't anywhere near. And that's only a handful of the things.
So Yeah. I think that's fair clarification. But this report, which is comparative in nature, did flag change orders as one of the things that's leading to over budget projects. So just clarifying that's miss Greensburg. That's my question. It's like not just change orders in general, but to the extent that we are open to feedback as a district about how to get things done more efficiently, then change orders is one of the things that are flagged. So I guess, you know, to to what is our response? That's right. Not that Actually, my thing is is it is this report makes sense? That's more than not so much.
Yeah. Which is also a fair question. Showing. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things we were trying to get at last time, which is that is that it, like and I guess, you know, there are there's an appendix that has 22 recommendations. And one of the things that would be helpful to see maybe as a follow-up just as a document for the committee is and that might be one of the matrices that you were referring to, mister Bryan, is that, like, what are the 22? Where do we agree? And then what are we doing about it? And what are those KPIs? Where do we disagree and why? And change orders might be one area where we don't think it's a bigger problem. Really dis I, personally, not really disagreeing fundamentally with the recommendations.
That's what I'm saying is many of these things they recommended, we actually do. And the other thing is now we are doing, and there's a few that we need to do. But there are recommendations that don't make sense to me because we already do it. So Right. And so that's one of the committee agendizing this a few times is then what are like, then why what was the discrepancy with MGT? Why did we commission this? Why do we spend a few $100,000 on this study? If it's moot, I mean, that's one of the things Ms.
Greenspan was getting at too. And if there are things that they're recommending that we're doing it, part of that opportunity with MGT was feedback to, so so that's why I think those 20 that appendix that has the recommendations, it would be helpful for the committee to have as a document our response. Yes, miss Pfefferman. I don't I haven't looked at the appendix with the 22 recommendations, so forgive me if it's there. But, and I come at this as a layperson, not Mhmm. A construction wonk. So for me, right, the address community needs under the recommendation in the in the
main report where, MGC says that it is, community engagement is challenging and costly to scale. And I understand that you're probably I don't know what you your direct connection is with the community relations office. They work under, us. Okay. Great. So I guess I'm wondering just from, like, a school family member perspective who has like, my sons both went to Colfax Elementary. Mhmm. And Oh, I'm so glad you told me that.
Oh, okay. Yeah. I remember that one well. Yes. I'm sure you do because there was a protest by the fifth graders. My son was a part of that protest to save the trees. Yes. Right? It was it was a former arboretum, this elementary school campus, and we had all these amazing trees. And, and I understand that there is sort of, you know, there's the time where you all lay this out to the community. Here's the vision of what we're doing. Right? It can sometimes take a long time for that process to even start, and a
lot of those families have moved on. Right? And you've got new families who weren't a part of those early discussions. And so, you know, I'm not just and my by the way, my older son now goes to Cleveland. Right? So there you go. My younger son goes to, Walter Reed, which is a very different situation. Mhmm. So I guess I'm wondering about sort of that community engagement piece because as district policies change, I'm thinking specifically about the greening policies that have shifted over the last few years, with, you know, the reduction of asphalt, the increase in green spaces, thinking
about sort of like rain permeable surfaces, right, throughout campuses. Is all that is all those policy all those policy changes things that you all are monitoring and then implementing in current projects? Absolutely. Okay. So because I because because, I think that something that's come up again and again in conversations with families is that, like, I'm thinking about, there was an elementary school in Eagle Rock that reached out to us to be like, hey. They're like replacing as the asphalt with even more asphalt.
And, like, they couldn't really get, any help or any communication or engagement about the project. I I don't remember which one it is. I don't remember. It must be? Oh, it's Dahlia Elementary. And then there was a K Town elementary school where, like, this heritage oak tree was Which one? I don't remember. It's in K Town somewhere. This immense oak tree that had stood there for a hundred years was chopped down, and the community didn't know about it. And then, of course, Colfax. But, but it just I'm hearing oh, and Dixie Canyon also.
Some folks reached out to me to be like, you know, there was a we raised money for a green project, a greening area, a garden area, that falls under sort of, like, this new, like, partnership policy with nonprofits. And it was all settled. And then we get a call a week before that construction is supposed to happen that it's now not happening and that there's nothing we can do. That was at Dixie Canyon Elementary. I mean, it was, like, big, big drama for that community because they had fought so hard to raise money, in partnership with this nonprofit to create a garden.
And and district personnel, like, wouldn't return phone calls, like, wouldn't have conversations. And it was sort of a mess, and really disheartening for a lot of those families, especially considering Dixie Canyon, like, is under such crazy construction that there's no real play space for students. There's no green space for students right now during their construction. So So I guess I'm asking, like, how do we increase responsiveness? How do we increase engagement? Like, were there recommendations, addressing the challenging, components of community engagement?
So, one, I don't know anything about this heritage tree. Yes. I know about a number of your the other projects you listed. So there's community engagement on almost all of the well, all of the large projects, and it depends on some of the smaller projects. So on all of the large large projects, there's engagement through the whole process. This is what we're going to do. This is what we're thinking of. Here's the architect at this meeting. Here's the the next realm of the plan.
Here we're gonna come and, start construction. There's a whole series of meetings throughout the process. I I know, Dixie Canyon that I have dozens, if not over a 100 emails personally written by me to that community. So I know that there's engagement. I know that there's response. So I'm not sure about that personally that there's no response. Maybe there was a window there. We customize engagement for every project based on the community's particular needs and concerns.
So, like, when you're getting hundreds of emails from a particular community, does that mean you all, like, send in the community engagement SWAT team to, like We hold a call meeting about what's going on? Right. Or we write very detailed, emails or we send out flyers. So it depends on each circumstance and each project and each need, but that's that's why we have a community relations department. This this report does not say that there's a problem with community engagement.
What it says is in the interviews, Roosevelt was used as a very good example of community engagement in that particular sense, and we should make sure that we do that. So all the large projects have a similar, engagement process. What was unique there was the LA Conservancy. Right. Because it's a historical site. Right. And then and I can talk to you about that detail. And I love that there's a positive example.
I just I feel like over the last few years is a unique condition. Dixie, Dahlia. Dahlia, I'll have to look into. Yeah. Oh, that was a delightful, mess as well, talking to those families who were very upset. So I just I guess I just wanna highlight that, you know, community, we should on the side of having too much Absolutely. Engagement, and definitely, like, good to have a SWAT team when, like, the emails and phone calls are coming in.
Yes. Thank you. Other questions, comments? And welcome, miss Sandy Newbell. Yeah. Eric? First of all, I I should say I've been really happy with the construction at Castle Heights. To my knowledge, it's been moving quickly, and and everybody's like, wow. That's gonna be done soon. But I I'm curious because, you know, obviously, change orders, as you did mention, they do arise on a kind of you know, on a case by case basis. But at a point, we can start to see some patterns. Right? Like if I do something, that may affect the roof or open up that wall.
And I think schools are in a unique position where if that happens, there is that pressure to keep the project moving because otherwise, what are we gonna do? Displace a whole classroom? And that's where I'm I'm wondering, are we taking from this, like, the the opportunity to create, you know, additional guidelines on, like, kicking the tires related to a project's main objective? So if we're going to So that's what I meant by due diligence. So we always had a due diligence approach before we, you know, you have a
scope of work. We want to we want to do this. We want to replace this building. We want to build a new building. We wanna have a new field. Right? We wanna replace the infrastructure because it's a 100 years old. But then, there are things that come along that you didn't know. So dealing with unknown conditions was the first big issue that we felt we had to address. So that's what we started to look at instead of just doing, GPR, you know,
use we decided to do potholing. Now we don't pothole across an entire school. That's a a way to go into the ground and find the actual using air or water, finding the actual pipes. How how low are they? Where are they? How big are they? Because they're never usually where the asbelts actually show them. What we also did was expand due diligence into the early design phase so that we weren't spending too much time getting everything perfect while the escalation went up.
Right? So you're trying to balance how much do you need to know, how much risk are you going to take on, how much delay are you gonna do because you're never gonna get it perfect anyway. You're gonna have a change order. You're gonna have an unfa unforeseen condition because you're working on existing schools. So we try to balance that. So we extended our due diligence approach that is while we before we scope, before we go to the board, during early design, in design build, there is opportunities working
under that contract with the contractor to put some of that on their plate at a better time. So you again, you're moving quicker. And and this is one of those situations where I think moving quickly may be may counteract the the efficiency of the project and the the dollar spent. And just in that, you you know, I It depends on how much escalation you have. Escalation has been eating our money away. Now this last year, escalation has suddenly slowed. But moving fast in a bond program with judicious steps and policies and procedures, not
just recklessly going out there and doing stuff. Right. And I I mean, I guess where I'm going is I I think an example would be if we look at HVAC. It seems to me that that, replacing an HVAC system, might be you know, we might see a pattern that that we find the roof is not in good shape while replacing an HVAC system. And then we end up with a hole in the roof, and we say, oh, we gotta keep that project moving. You know, are we are we adding maybe a layer of inspection to that roof? We we do look at the roofs before we do those.
Okay. I mean, over time, if you're doing a whole campus and you're doing eight buildings, you know, one of the buildings may have had a roof that you could not perceive. We did find one recently where there had been a previous fire and the sheathing hadn't been replaced. It looks great when you look at it. Well, and and, you know, I think that's the example that comes to mind. That's the example that comes to mind, but it's more of, like, are like, are we looking tangentially out at the the projects that, you know, sort of the main objective that we're identifying and seeing what what's related to it so that, you know,
maybe we can avoid that change order by by scoping it in early on and, you know, maybe that adjusts when the project gets started based on, you know, when that would affect the school day. And that's and and, actually, we're just about to publish. We're already using it. We're just about to publish the new due diligence. That's what I was saying it's important. Change order and additional scope are considered the same thing in this, but just kind of But they're different. Different things. Right. And they even mentioned BMRs. So, you know, it's one thing to change the scope of the work during design
before you bid it. That's different than changing it in construction. There are pros and cons to doing it during construction. It's much better to to do it during design. You found it, you know it, just do it. Just one other question. Was there any, have very have any change orders been subject to a disputed contract term? Well, there there are claims. Sure. And and I I'm that's just why I I kinda raised that as far as,
like, are have we looked at our standard terms and conditions and noticed any any kind of, patterns there as far as things that that we can tighten up or adjust? Our emphasis over the last year plus has been looking at change order processing. Make so first of all, it even references the 2020 change order audit. What we're doing now is a little different, though we have improved. You know, it was really a paperwork kind of issue. What we're doing right now is I'm monitoring aging change order and why are they
not getting processed so that I'm looking at those. We put, people to focus on those because the faster you close those, once you're resolved, your contractor gets their money. And that's been a big issue too. In other words, you've got a lot of change orders. We've created a better escalation process within the construction management side so that they move more quickly through, and they escalated to, let us say, more senior people to come in and break the log jams of disputes that are oral before they're a dispute.
And then I'm trying we've got a chart, and I look at this every month. Are you really truly making progress with closing those other change orders? And the other thing we did is resources are always important on a they talk about that too. We hired two more firms. We had a firm, so we have three firms that can support construction cost estimating for changes. So we're making all those that was already in the works. Got it. Thank you. Mhmm. Can I ask on that point, one of the, recommendations in the report is to
include different clauses in construction contracts to address cost escalation, some performance based incentives? Yeah. How how are we responding to that? Are we making any changes to the future? And I had them, give me, specific to incentives, which are intriguing. And so they gave me a very complicated process we would have to do, and so I haven't really eaten that eaten that, studied it, eaten it, and gone back
to them on offering bonuses. That's not usually used on this kind of construction. It's used in emergencies like when the 10 Freeway collapsed, the state used incentive bonuses. Cost escalation clauses, is under study. And then timely payments actually, we don't have a problem with timely payments. We're paying off we we need to get feedback from the credit. Well, I appreciate that those other things are at least you're looking at. So, other questions, concerns.
So I'll note so one other, well, a few things. One, Tim, is Greenspan's earlier point. I do think my read of the report and I also know internally there were different teams working on this. So I don't know if it was you all or deputy superintendent. But, there were 99 selected that were then collectively whittled down to 10, which I agree is not the best sample size. So I guess, you know, and and HVAC projects were the only specific project that were analyzed, and it said we're generally in line. It doesn't provide a conclusion on other types of projects.
So I guess, what are we doing? Because they couldn't find comparisons. It's really their issue. But this but that's so that's my question. And we'll it will kind of segue into in a few minutes our shade, conversation. But there are certain things that we do that every district does. Shade structures, lunch tables, soccer fields. And what are we doing because this report what I was really hoping this report did, which it didn't, was say Santa Monica did a soccer field, Beverly Hills did a soccer field, Las Virgins did a soccer field, Compton Unified, LA Unified. And here's where we were aligned, here's where we're not. And that did not happen.
So what are we doing as a district to look at those discrete projects that we do a lot of, like fields, cleaning projects, shade structures we'll get to, to understand how we compare to peer districts with the same economic factors, same state law, same public contracting rules, etcetera. Like, kind of isolating those variables. What are we doing to continue to learn and improve? Well, we usually use our own projects that we just built and bid or and completed and then compare as we go. You That's not my question. My question is what are we doing to compare to other? And if we're not, then we're gonna personally, we are not personally at this time
comparing ourselves to other districts in that sense. No. I mean, we could add that to Well, yeah. That might be one of the I mean, that was what that was what I hoped when this was originally envisioned, this MGT report was gonna do. And I think to some of the comments, despite maybe there being some learnings there, it it really didn't do that. And when we And I haven't we haven't been asked to do that, but we could. Yeah. One thing, that it does note and then we move on to shade is that, you know, one of the, things that we hear a lot from folks on the ground and teachers and parents is just the length of projects.
And one of the recommendations or one of not recommendations. One of the observations is that LA Unified completes only 41 square feet per day compared to 60 for, the, peer districts or the peer set. Is that in this review? It is. Okay. And I'm curious about Is that within the, the California projects or is that beyond into, non California projects? That is and I'm looking this is page 50 of the report. Okay. It says in terms of ADA upgrades, modern falling asleep at that place. Modernization and renovation projects.
Mhmm. Hell, a USD completed I remember this. On average, four. So I'm I'm curious. So maybe that's one of the follow ups you'll do, but I am curious because that is, like, that is one of the things when we hear compared to other when we discussed it with the palaces and the Yeah. I thought that was intriguing. Well, I did as well, which is why I'm asking about it. Yeah. I don't know how to do that. We'll add we'll add a follow-up to it as well. To my list. Great. Because I did notice that, and I thought that was really peculiar. It didn't make sense to me. And then I'm wondering is that because we the sample size?
Right. Patricia Chambers, office of the deputy superintendent. I just wanted to comment on your question about are we looking at other districts and particular shade structures or whatever the project might be comparing it to other districts. And I will say that that was the challenge. I know that was what we were all seeking with that. MGT had a difficult time trying to get comparative information. We even on our end, our deputy superintendent as well as Jim Torrance also reached out to several districts to try and get competitive comparative information, and we were not
successful either. So I feel like that is something we can go back and try and go through other measures to get, but it it wasn't very easy for us to get any of that information. I appreciate you mentioning that, and it's funny. I name checked this deputy superintendent and then Patricia appears. So thank you for being on call, as it were. But but that is I know that's one of the reasons that the study was delayed, but it really is frustrating because these are other also public institutions that should have transparency in their projects and something like that. Because, you know, again, isolate, like, a a field. I mean, a 100, you know, yard, a 100 meter soccer field should be something
that is easy to compare. We, and the fact that that this wasn't able to do that, and I understand that some of the districts weren't forthright with that information, but those are the types of follow-up. We're gonna transition in a minute or two to shade structures, and those are things that, like, you just drive around. Even in my district, because I have other districts within our district, Culver City, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, they all have shade structures. And yet we're gonna see that our average cost is north of $400,000. And I'm just be curious when parents say, why does it cost so much to put up shade? It's a big difference if we're saying, well, that's what every public school district has
and then our fight is maybe different versus we are an outlier. So I I would do think as a follow-up, kind of the documents just with those performance metrics and then some of those specifics like that time. So, So I would just wanna say I'm I'm I'm not truly flippant about this report. I think it's been valuable to us to help us focus. Change orders are very important and we've utilized this. I've gone through everything. The one thing I didn't mention is on my hot list, and they have it
on their hot list, was constructability review, analysis of how successful and useful our constructability review processes have been. Because that's where we should be catching some of this. On my list. Great. Thank you. Appreciate that and kind of the continued engagement with this report. Okay. Our final, presentation and conversation before public comment and our adjournment is on shade structure projects, which is both, oh, is this you two? Yes. Great. I didn't know I didn't I didn't say that that I did, just wanted to
relieve you if that was what's gonna happen, but, no. The, I'm a broken record on this. Not only is this aligned to the district's goals around climate and heat mitigation given the climate emergency, but this is one where, you know, again, I think a lot of this and I remember doing a a kind of a road show with, mister Hovat or miss Tokes' predecessor and as our chief facilities executive early on in my tenure. Where we went and we did one at Westchester High, we did one at TAF where we talked to parents around, like, you know, why things cost so much and why, you know, it's not as easy when you're talking about a school district bathroom,
it's not like just renovating your bathroom. But I think, like, I think most of our constituents and parents and people in this community will acknowledge, like, a two x, a three x, sometimes even a four x, like, escalation from a public entity like LA Unified to a private entity. But when you think about a shade structure, which you can buy a $100 shade sale at Home Depot and put it over the backyard or over a a playground yard, which a lot of our schools are doing because when you start to see what these costs, a lot of principals are like, no way. Or you look at off the shelf, shade structures that you can buy and with
installation online that are California approved, at least based on a cursory Google search, cost at maximum $50,000 for a 40 by 40 foot structure. Or you look at what we did during COVID, which was an emergency, but I would argue that climate is as well, where we had temporary shade structures like wedding tents, that we had outside. In barrels of water. Barrels of water as weights to keep them down in winds. Then you look at that and then you say, okay. Well, then why is it cost $400,000 to cover a play structure at an all unified elementary school?
And that's the question we're trying to answer. I will say that early a few years ago when we heard that there were some state barriers to this, I had, SB five fifteen passed. I worked with senator Stern and others. It got watered down a bit, but it did help streamline the process, and yet, cost continue to escalate. So I wanted to do this as a discreet example of some of the things this committee has been talking about because and I think the presentation that you're about to go through and that we got last night gets us there a little bit, but I I know there will be more discreet questions about how do we nail
down the actual cost if you're ordering something from a catalog, which you can basically do for a shade structure. How much of this is LA Unified, controlled when it comes to soil testing, asbestos testing, ADA requirements, all that versus state law and federal law. And I really would like the committee to have some recommendations because I I don't think, you know, my colleague, Andy Newbill probably feels the same way. You you can't go to a parent and say covering this little play structure is gonna cost half $1,000,000 when folks, including in this room, are building entire homes for,
you know, not much more than that and significantly less per square foot. So with that, opining, I'm gonna turn it over back to miss O'Brien for the shade structure presentation. So I do have slides. Yep. K. Here we are. That's not my cover, so there must be one more. Okay. So, I don't know if everyone had a chance to read the slides, but I'll go through them in detail and you can ask me questions. So executive summary, level. The district has, for many years, even before the board resolution, really been trying to
add trees and shade shelters across our schoolyards because we do recognize, heat exposure is a very, very challenging issue across the district. It's not just in the North Valley, it's across the whole district. We've got multiple programs and I'll list those later, but we also have an where we provided on a regular basis shade structures. We have a new program under Measure US where we're gonna provide shade structures specifically
over existing play structures and we have done some of those to date. So, you know, I've got data on those too. Shade structures that we utilize are engineered. They're code compliant. They have to meet structural requirements, accessibility requirements, regulatory requirements. And as you mentioned, Nick, and thank you, SB five fifteen limited the investment in dollars of the scope of the accessibility upgrades for these types of projects, shade structures,
not other types of projects. Though, actually, it applies to some much smaller projects. So key cost drivers that we're gonna talk about include structural engineering, the design of the foundations, design re DSA review, but because that does take time and it that time equals money, Accessibility upgrades required by code. Utility coordination, again, when you're putting a structure, even though these foundations may only be
four feet, unless it's liquefaction, they could be much deeper. You have to, you know, coordinate around, utilities. There are long lead material, challenges occasionally and then of course you have to have inspections. Our schoolyard school yard shading has been very successful and we know that from other studies that it does help us decrease the heat on the play play area, even when it's asphalt or even when it's play matting.
S b 15 that we've talked about, it took effect in January 2025 2024, so we've been using it for over a year. What did SB 15 give us? It narrowed our requirements of what we were required to do to meet federal and state ADA compliance for accessibility. The exemption also is supposed to benefit these smaller projects. Well, when the smaller projects are 400,000, why are we talking small?
But the concept was to help these smaller projects so that we weren't putting a million dollars or more into some projects where all we wanted to do was shade, but we didn't have an accessible path of travel. So it caps our investment at 20% of the construction cost. So if the construction cost is a 100,000, it's a 120,000, and we don't have to invest more than that 20%. There are some kind sometimes some unusual conditions.
So, these are the list of projects that we have been putting, shade structures on. Outdoor learning environment projects are actually a very specific 2,000 square foot outdoor classroom or rather two classrooms. We use those there. Playground and campus exterior upgrades where we go out and we replace the asphalt, bring in the 30% greening, we typically put, shade structures out on those campuses that's included
in those projects. Early education outdoor classroom projects, which we've been doing a number of them always have shade. Classroom replacement and modernization projects at elementary schools includes, shade structures. They didn't originally, but they do now. And I say originally, I mean some some of the projects like Dixie Canyon, we added shade shelters too. That that was not typically what we did. Campus upgrades and alterations where a board member or a regional priority funds shade structures
or that's a big interest with our particularly with our board members to bring shade to our schools. And then, our new program, shade shelters over shade shelter over play playground equipment. So there's a lot of ways to make sure you do your best to decrease the cost just by doing proper planning. For instance, if you do have a site and we do have sites where you have a great grade change, where you have plateaus, you wanna be strategic and put
that place structure where you don't have to put a large ramp, and large ramps cost a lot of money. So part of it starts with planning. Where do you put it? Is there supervision needs? Do we have to invest a lot of money to do this in ADA? Because you can't just put a shade structure here and not put a ramp in because every child has to be able to get to this shade structure. So that's always part of our Start by putting it in a place where you don't have to invest a huge amount of money in ADA.
I already mentioned the utilities, but soil quality is going to be part of this conversation. Why does it cost so much so much? Sometimes we run into liquefaction. That is a seismic vulnerability that we have to address. So the foundations, even for fake shade shelters, can be quite deep to meet those requirements, especially if they're combined with high wind loads. So structural requirements. We're careful on drainage and irrigation. Existing conditions also, particularly for these kinds of projects we're going to be doing with
Measure US, is what is the play matting like? You know, most of our play structures have that that matting you see. It's not sand anymore and it's not wood chips. It's something the children can fall on and they don't hurt themselves. Sometimes we get to a site, it's great. We're gonna do this, but the play matting needs to be replaced. Or there's something wrong with the play structure and we either have to fix it or replace it. Older play structures often need to have repairs. So those costs have to go into these projects too.
I'll skip to the next part. Let's go back to regulatory. So besides structural and access, we do run into safety compliance. And I'm gonna show you two projects where we have safety compliance, where we have to invest on these two particular examples I'm bringing to you. I've already beaten ADA compliance to death, but so you understand ADA compliance. It's not just the walking path. You might have, and we try to avoid this, a restroom upgrade along that path that you're supposed to improve.
We generally try not to put the play structure where we might have to make an improvement to a restroom. By the way, we could have improved that restroom six or seven years ago, but the code has changed and they'd want you to upgrade it to the current code. So we try to be strategic. We do often have to add in drinking fountains. And when we put in drinking fountains, we put in bottle bottle fillers because that's that's our policy. Slope adjustments are very important to understand. In the code, there's actually you're only allowed to have a 2% slope maximum differential
across a a an accessible path. That's really shallow. So we have to measure those. That's something we often find. It it might look totally fine and safe, but it doesn't need it mean it meets code. Surface materials are the same, you know, it could be damaged asphalt, it could be damaged concrete, or it could be damaged play mat. So here's, like, everything under the sun you could imagine. So on the top are two play structures that were built.
We are not talking about those kinds of play structures. There's one on the bottom left at Northridge. That is a hard metal roof. That's what the school wanted. It's adjacent to a lunch shelter. If this was a lunch shelter, it would have to be a hard roof. We don't have lunch shelters that can be combined as, shade shelters that are, fabric can't be fabric. And Is that a district policy, state law, or federal law? That is a that's a good question.
Is it our policy from food services or is it health service? Let me write that down. I'm sorry. We'll do questions at the end, but that one because I also Yeah. That's okay. Mask. Because somebody I'm sorry. I have a question about all these but that one in specific I hadn't heard that one before. So Well, because we generally don't you know, the the I'm just gonna say the fabric is not necessarily gonna keep the water out. So you can't serve a meal. A lot of schools have inclement weather schedules and do lunch inside anyways, so I just wanna know. But these are the types of things we're trying to understand. Like, where do these come from?
So Yeah. Good question. For me, it comes from food services, but it could be the health department. Okay. And then on the bottom right at Sylvan, you can see these are two play structures with one of them over a play. I'm sorry. Two shade shelters, one of them over a play structure. So that's more or less what we're talking about in this program, the bottom right hand photograph. So I'm bringing you two projects that, will be coming to the board, I think,
in December. Yeah. December. So here's the play equipment. You can see the play matting from this photo looks okay. I didn't see a lot of investment in play matting on this one. So what is unique about this one? First of all, I'm gonna start out. What is the what is the cost of the shade shelter itself? Off the shelf ordered from a catalog, this one's 116,000. They generally are around 100,000. Sometimes they can be as low as 70.
It depends on the size. And the the next one I'll show you is actually larger. This is an older site. So on this site, there was more ADA investment that we did needed to do and the requirements came out to be 19%. 19% of the construction budget had to be added on to cover that cost. So why why is it 443? Well, there are soft costs. There's soils investigation. There's verification of utilities.
There's probably, you know, built into this contingency, which we normalize across all of our projects so it's not excessive. And, soft costs are our management costs. We also carry what we call a reserve. So when we bid the project, if the bid doesn't need that reserve, the reserve is pulled away. Okay? Reserve is usually for unusual escalation issues. So that's that project. And here's Romer Middle School. This is gonna be two shade shelters.
Actually, I forgot to tell you, but if you look in the diagram in the middle, the site plan, the aerial, there's a little yellow shade, outline of where the shade shelter goes. And this one's only 40 by 56. The next one oh, the other thing about this, this requires liquefaction. So the found like oh, sorry. This has liquefaction, so it requires very deep foundations. So that's the additional cost on this. Why is it over 400? Here's but wasn't that they they had to do, testing or whatnot, but wasn't that
done already prior to when this was installed? Oh, we haven't built it yet. No. He means the play structure. The play structure was installed. Correct? It's there? This one is just this is not a play structure example. I'm sorry. The next one Hazelton. The next one is. Yeah. The Hazelton Elementary. Go back to Hazleton. He's saying that there's already an existing structure. Oh. We're not all of that. Structure there and then why did there need to be Well, the shade shelter is a different structure. So this is gravity. This is just straight gravity, and they're designed a certain way. So structurally, they're gonna withstand some twisting in an earthquake.
Okay? The shade shelter acts differently. It can be it has wind structure a wind loading on it also. So liquefaction, it's a really good question actually, but definitely the shade shelter has to be able to move with wind and an earthquake. And the and the liquefaction, if you remember the ninety four earthquake, there were zones on the West Side Of Los Angeles where all the chimneys came down. It's because the earth became like jello.
So you have to you have to protect the structure from twisting and falling from liquefaction in an earthquake. But I I guess miss Rodriguez's question is that, like, in this structure is bolted into the ground. And there was testing that would have been done, soil testing, asbestos, could it be even do that for those. Where My question is on why It's a very good question. The testings are already been done to install the plate structure, why does it need to be redone to a question? Well The the shade structure. I don't even know if it was done for the plate structure.
That's what I'm saying. I have to check on that. But no matter what, we found liquefaction, so you need a deeper foundation. Yeah. In other words, maybe that didn't need it or maybe it did, but no matter what, we have to address the liquefaction twisting in an earthquake if that ground becomes like a jello. What you're trying to prevent is twisting and falling. But does that always happen in every earthquake? No. Only where you have liquefaction. Okay.
Thank you. Sure. Where is accounting for the liquefaction, reflected in this budget? It's in the construction costs. In the construction costs. Okay. Yes. Is that is that the answer? I mean, is that am I answering your question? Well, I noticed on the next one, the construction costs were approximately the same. Right. Is there a liquefaction here as well? No. There's different issues. So this is a newer building. Romer was built later than Hazeltine. Hazeltine is quite old. So this met more current codes for accessibility.
However, so we don't have a lot of accessibility that we have to invest in here. It's like 2% of the cost. Some minor upgrades. What we found when we did this is along the path of travel, there are exterior x bracing on well, you can't see it. See the middle slide? There's a big gray what looks like it could be a field. It's actually a building. Along that top edge of that photo, that edge of that building, the x the
structure is on the exterior, and it's x bracing. It doesn't meet current ADA code because you have to have safety railing so no one hits their head on the x bracing. So we had to add railings to prevent people from hitting their heads on the exterior bracing. The other thing is we had a fire alarm issue that we had to upgrade some fire alarm equipment here to bring it up to code. Those are safety issues, so we had to add them.
I'm I'm I just can I ask a quick question? Because I feel like I heard you say this before that, like, cost of playground repair is rolled into the shade expenses. So is this ADA upgrading that isn't directly connected to the, installation of the shade structure is still rolled into the construction costs for the shade structure. Yes. Up to 20% of the construction cost. Wow. Okay. That's what s b five one five gave us.
So on the other project, because it was an older school, it didn't have a lot of, recent upgrades for ADA, we had to invest 19%. On this, we had to invest about 2%. The other thing is this shade structure is off the shelf, is a 155,000. It's a double hip. It's actually much larger. There's also additional signage and additional railings. And guess what? I screwed up. This one is the liquefaction one.
There's no proposed budget for this one. Oh, did they erase it? Well, I'll tell you what it is because I have the cut sheet right here. Man, they shouldn't have erased it, and it's $576,000 to meet those safety requirements as well as building a different larger shelter. And it's a larger shelter, and it has liquefaction, not the other one. So and, Nick, I know that we always talked about shade shelters at around a
hundred and hundred and fifty. Those were projects about ten years ago. I went through all the independent shade shelter projects, looked at all the costs, how long it took to build them, etcetera, and and did see that in approximately '20 let me make sure I get this right. Twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, they started to decline. They were in the 200 range. There are some exceptions, to that, and then they climbed into the 300 to 400
range. This one is an unusual one because of the issue with the safety hitting your head along that x bracing and the liquefaction. And it's double the size. Yeah. I have tons of questions, but I I wanna let you finish and then have the Okay. So, shade shelter overplays structures, and this is, Nick, I'm sure one of your, critical questions. So we have $40,000,000 to invest in play over shade under measure US. We said we would do approximately 49.
You can see these are the examples. That's actually a double one. Other upgrades as we've discussed in the examples that I just showed, but most importantly is the last sentence here. Additional projects will be delay will be identified if funds remain, and we expect there to be. Because if you work between $3.50 and $4.50, you should be able to build a lot more. Once we budget all these and bid a few, we would start adding projects. Here's I mean, the scope of this need is incredible.
So we have 53 elementary schools with either current or planned shade over play structure. We have 49 that we just listed for measure US projected, and we still have 387 elementary schools without shade over play. Big, big list. Okay. I will open it up to my colleagues on the committee first for questions, comments. Miss Fefferman. Thank you. So on this final pie graph with the 387 elementary schools without shade over play
structures, is that does that include both, constructed structures and tree shade? No. This is only the shade shelter itself. Okay. Right. So when we build now, we always try to add as much shade with trees on playgrounds, particularly in elementary school yards. Thank you. Because a tree is always beautiful. Well, trees are better. A 100%. They just and they're cheaper. But they do take a little while to grow.
Right? So people have to be patient. But These don't happen overnight either. I'll tell you. So I might put my money on trees. Okay? But I actually I study this list of actuals and, from board approval to construction completion is two years. So if I know. So I'm just gonna walk through that. So you have design. You have to bid it, and buy it, and build it.
And in between those things, you have to go to DSA. But so the well, I'm gonna save my I know. But I'm just saying Yeah. Well, because we were told last week or last week. We were told last month by miss Claire that there are these DSA approved off the shelf structures. So one of my questions that I'll just ask now is when you is there additional DSA approval outside of because she made it seem like well, there's a catalog. You can buy these five We do. Projects. So So is there additional DSA approval outside of that that's required? Only for the ADA or the liquefaction additional foundation?
So if we get those structures, there's zero and and there's not those additional costs. There's zero ADA. If you don't have a wind load problem, then the off the, shelf, what they call PC pre oh, god. Forget my Checked or something. Yeah. So pre checked. Yeah. If there's not excessive wind or liquefaction or some other unusual issue with the soils, then you could just build it to basic parameters. You have to pay for the foundations in addition to the structure.
Well, this is one of I'll just ask some of the questions now. And then what the would be this is one where a few things. One, I think a comparison to other districts, Right. I wrote that down. I think you're right. Because and two, one of the things I'm gonna do ask as a follow-up and I'll put this on an email is, like, if what looks like DSA at least what these websites are saying are DSA compliant in California shade structures. Like, ones that look exactly like the one over, like, on page 33, or slide 33.
Like, look look exactly that. Like, 40 by 40 are being estimated, like, drilled into the ground, are are being advertised at, like, thirty five to forty thousand dollars. So even if you say double that, we're still significantly under. So I'm curious There's 70 to a 100,000 typically. Okay. So that's so I'd wanna understand and just Just the structure. Right. So I wanna understand that this these these websites are advertising just the structure. So I'd wanna understand kind of where You mean the PC's? The PC's are The PC's.
Yeah. So sometimes and I've I've learned to, you know, never nothing surprises me in this district. Sometimes for our, like, individual iPads, our educator LA Unified bulk pricing is more than a consumer. And then you look into it and it's because of the software and the security and all that. But, like, but I'm curious why. So that will be one question. But two I've got it. On all these projects, it seems like the actual raw cost of the of the structure, the is 25% of the project. And so that seems to be a comparison that we can make to other districts
because three quarters of the cost of all these shade structures are installation and all this other testing. Foundations, accessibility. Right. And one of the things I And code compliance. And so and I already alluded to the hard shell lunch question, but one of the things we tried to do leading up to SB five fifteen, but clearly need to do a better job, is understand all those things. Who is the decision maker? If it's district policy, this board can change it. And that I don't think District policy on what? Like, when you look at slide Well, like, even, like, 28.
Like, DSA, like, all these, you know, all these the a d like, the ADA compliance or structural design or when you're saying things like, it can't be if it's also gonna be used for lunch, it can't be can be I'm gonna check on that. I know. But what I would like is kind of a list of how much of those are district policies that can be changed by this board. How much of those compliance is all federal and state law. So That that that last five. Right. But we have the ability as the largest district in the state and the second
largest in the country to influence law. And I don't think we do well enough. And so some of these things I mean, so when we are telling parents including those who are on this committee, like, they raise money for a shade structure and we tell them, well, we're adding an additional 20% to your cost, which was much higher pre s b five fifteen. That is state and federal law requires that any school district that does a shade structure has now spend up to 20% for other ADA. That's right. Because it's a state law. Right. So those are the types of, like so some of this I would like further
breakdown because those are things that we, again, attempted to do with our advocacy around s p five fifteen, but needed to do a better job. You should be able to put in, I think, a standalone shade structure without doing restroom upgrades. Well, that's why we try to avoid that at all costs. I don't know that any of these have any restroom upgrades. I'm just saying that's Well, if we're using that as a reason for why these cost so much, I think we want the No. That's the list of regulatory requirements, but we're trying to avoid them by planning it. Right. But I I think what would be helpful if you look at an alternative miss Cindy Newbold.
But if you look at, like, you know, take Hazeltyne or something that's completed, like Lanai Road, you know, might have from board approval to completion taken two years, but what that doesn't account for is a lot of these schools, they're getting outside funding, the parents are raising money, they're asking for sponsorships, and so that process takes years because they think initially this will cost $50,000 and it's gonna cost 10 x that. But that breakdown of percentage on page 31, it would be helpful to have that both in cost in addition to percentage and a subheading for each one, like what
is going into that. And then it would be helpful to have each of that, categorized by what is state requirement, what is federal requirement, what is district requirement. And then that was what we should compare to other districts because, you know, I'd I'd again, if you're telling me every school district in the state is spending $443,000 on this, then it seems like CSBA, the California School Boards Association, and other advocacy groups should band together and change this. But I I don't I doubt it. So that would be helpful to understand.
So because both of these projects, only 25% is the actual shade structure. Okay. Miss Hendy Nubo. Quick question. You asked some of the questions that I had on '31 where it says these kind of buckets site and environmental 9.4%. Now oops. If possible, that can be broken down. But then to find out when you come up with a number like 5% in reserve, is that based on previous work?
Is that how we get this number of 5% would go to a reserve or just 5% of any project is why you would because I know it's different on every project, but around the same Right. So we use higher numbers on bigger projects. Right? We do. So this is these reserves are 10% of the line item for construction. For construction. But within construction, it changed because even as you were sharing with us, just so
for clarification, I know you mentioned the liquefaction. Can you clarify? Because in one project, you said it needed to be done in the Hazeltine, and then in the Romer project, it did not need to be done or it did need to be done? It was Romer that has the liquefaction. I made an error when I was describing the work at Hazeltine. Got it. So in Hazeltine, it did not need that? Not need that. No. But we had more ADA requirements, 19%. In the okay. So that would be helpful to know what was ADA and what was because when
we look at a project, obviously, if federal says ADA has to be a certain way, it'd be great to be able to see that. And then you mentioned some work that you did that you didn't share with us kind of itemizing through historically, some projects that we've done. It would be great to see the trend Mhmm. Of where these projects are. And as you mentioned, this one had a ADA, this one did not, to kinda see where the influx is on Right. They all have ADA, actually. So all of those had ADA. So are there any projects All of the ones from 2017 on have ADA.
And is there a trend as to why that is? It's required by code. Because of where they're being placed. Because they don't meet accessibility state or federal requirements. Got it. Can I Go ahead? Can I just clarify? So the, the kind of big picture of how ADA works is our school sites, like almost all existing buildings unless they were built very recently, do not meet accessibility codes. You are not required to go in and make your buildings accessible until you do
a project. The fact that you're doing a project triggers an ADA accessible upgrade. So but for a project, you have existing conditions, so there they are. As soon as you do a project, you trigger the eight a requirement. The extent of those requirements depend on the project, but all projects Mhmm. Trigger a DSA requirement. What, s b five one five did is it limited the ADA requirements to 20%
of the construction costs. So before that, you could build a shade shelter project and trigger a ramp at a school site that only had stairs down to the play yard because the idea is that every student should have access to that shade shelter. So if you had to build a million dollar ramp to get to a $300,000 shade shelter, so be it, unless you applied for what's called a hardship application. SB five one five allowed us to limit the ADA to 20%.
We have to work with DSA to determine is that going to be a drinking water faucet or the restroom sink or the small ramp down to the playground, but rather now we don't spend a we don't have to spend a million dollars on a ramp, we have to spend 20% of 300,000 of the construction cost, which would be 60,000, which is great. Right. Right? Which allows us to build more shade shelters and do less, of the project budget
on investments in ADA. And I wanna use an example of how they are reasonable in this let's say you have a noncompliant, non ADA water fountain from the nineteen fifties. They want you to replace that, to put in an ADA compliant piece of equipment for children who can't reach it because they are in a wheelchair. Let's say you also have that crosswalk problem and you're a little bit over 2%. They would say, don't do the 2%.
Do the water fountain. You can you can negotiate a a level of reasonableness of what's the best thing to do with your money. Right. And our our goal, at least initially with, I should say my goal, was to exempt from any ADA improvements in shade structures. Not because ADA improvements are not important to be clear, but because there's such an urgency, especially in LA around in California around the climate emergency that these projects should be done. And so there's an irony where miss Tokes is saying, well, if not every student can access the shade structure, that needs to change.
But macro, if you helicopter up, way fewer students are accessing any shade structures because of this requirement. So it doesn't make sense. And that was the impetus behind this. It got watered down in Sacramento, and so we got to 20%, which is definitely better than 40% or 80%, but it's still not good enough. So is there as you say, negotiation, so is there projects within a campus? Because is there a radius as to where the structure is to where ADA is? So we try to plan to put it where you make the least investment in
ADA. But under ADA path of travel, there is there there is you're supposed to start at the park at the parking spot in the parking lot. Go to the front door, go to the front desk, and have a path of travel through a building, passing restrooms all the way to this new Structure. Structure. This 20% limit allows us to not spend an I mean, we don't need a
teacher who who has a handicapped spot, who can get to the front door to nest we don't need to get all that investment all the way to the play structure. Right? So if the teacher can get into the school reasonably, that's great. But we don't wanna spend all that money to get all the way to a play structure. So we try to do it from we try to place it where you can see and supervise, where you might also have shade, and where it's a reasonable small
investment for ADA. We we try to be logical ourselves where we put it. Not in the out like, not in the back corner of the site or not at the bottom of another plateau. Got it. And last question I'll let someone else ask. You mentioned off the shelf, it was a 155 k for that was material? That was That was the shade shelter itself, the columns, not the foundations.
And there is a market on these shade structures. There's other companies. Are they bid? Or is this just the this is the price for any 30 by 80 We procure from these companies and negotiate, so that we can buy these, and we don't have to wait and procure it. In other words, it's like our when I was talking about the mobile modular units, the portables, we have a negotiation.
We call them up and say we need a 30 by 40, and we've already got a negotiated price. And this is, to Nick's point, this is the best deal that we get as the second largest in the country we get. This is like the warehouse wholesale. Well, that's the whole point of of getting those in place is that is that it is the best deal. This is the best deal. And it's the best product, I assume. Procurement procurement does those, with us, you know, an analysis of the best product for
the best price. But we have evidence of that, though. We have evidence that this is the best product. This is the best cost. They have to go through a they have to go through a whole process that's all documented. So procurement I'm pointing to Matt Right. Heads up procurement. Could, you know That will be helpful only. I mean, you know, when you're negotiating, you are able to show proof that this is the Yeah. Of course. Versus We can everything is documented in a bond program, so everything's gonna be And it's not marked up. We don't think that they mark up the price because they see us coming. No. We're we're I I'm just asking because we don't have who do we compare to?
I guess that's what I'm asking. We're a fat cow. Everybody wants to do everybody like that wants to do work with us because we're here. We have bond dollars, and we have more bond dollars. So we're a good client for them. Then the more they sell. Now, Matt will have to get the proof of the pudding because I don't know what she wants. Wanna hear that. You know, I think it goes back to the the conversation around the number of bidders and solicitations, and and we're happy to put some of that together to just kinda give you the the proof of the pudding. Yeah. I'm gonna I know other people wanna ask when we're getting short on time.
Matt Friedman, our chief procurement officer. Yes. I just I have to I don't buy it. I don't buy that what I'm seeing online and what other districts are doing with the best we can do is a 100 if we buy 50 of these, is a $155,000 for a piece of canvas and some poles. Mister Rodriguez. Yeah. I had a question. You were talking about construction. Isn't the majority of this thing this structure, isn't it prefabricated? Yeah. Everything above ground So except for the foundations. So why is there so much in the con so much being spent on construction?
155 is for two of them. Right? 155 for Roemer is for two of them. So they're approximately 70 something each. But you keep talking about construction cost at every single site, and what I'm saying is that these things are prefabricated. Oh, but they have to be installed. Right. You have to dig a hole. You have to pour a foundation. You have to put rebar in concrete, and you have to attach the structure. You have to fill the back I mean, there's construction involved. It's not just it's not like my backyard one. It seems like it's just slightly larger than that one.
That's what I mean, I'm seeing pictures. That's the issue, but that goes back to safety and requirements for structural safety. Okay. But but this is why this is what we're trying to get at. And I think some of these things like the custodian like, I twenty years ago, someone in this district could have made the decision that for lunch, shelters, they can't be canvassed, and then we just codified that. And then now we're spending way more than we need to for something that this board or this could change and save tons of of money. So that's my rationale. Talking about lunch shelters today at all.
I'm really talking about lunch shelters. I am now because I just learned that we have a What is it? Is a shade shelter not it's it's hard. It's fabric. What I'm saying is I'm not really talking about lunch shelters because that's a different set of requirements that Nick has asked me to figure out. Is that a health is that a health code? But it's illustrative but I think there's this issue that we're trying to get at which is why why do things cost? Right. But I I wasn't antiquated Right. The policy. I didn't bring anything with the met metal Miscreen stack. I'm talking fabric.
I was so a lot of these areas have poor soils or issues. Do you in your due diligence, do you look at other locations maybe on-site On the site. Yes. Where it could be. Have you ever, like, moved a play structure to an easier location to build? That's what they do in the very early part of it is verify where is your liquefaction zone. Has have you Liquefaction zones are typically not small. They're usually quite large.
I'm just wondering have you ever I'll go ask if they've ever moved one to liquefaction. Have you ever said to the school if you put it here, it's gonna be a lot less money? Or No. Yes. That's exactly what we do. Okay. Oh, yeah. For a variety of reasons. Accessibility, it's better supervision, it's closer to this facility. You know, in other words, there's a planning there's a planning group that works on Right. But we're talking we're trying to save money. That's so are they Well, we always try to put it where it's gonna save money. Do do you ever do, and I don't know if it with all these regulations,
like a design build? Have you investigated that? We haven't used that for these yet. So design build has to be over a million dollars. So the question Okay. The question in LAUSD Is that an LAUSD policy? No. That's a state law. Okay. State regulation under design build. However, that brings up another topic. When we look at these, if we can, for a variety of different sites, the 49 sites, come up with two or three models that work, we should look at, one, buying them on bulk, set them one at a time, and, two, looking at
execution implementation strategies that might be efficient. You hire one contractor and he's gonna do the seven over here and another contractor who's gonna do the seven over in San Pedro or whatever. We will look at that. And when we do that, we can always look at design build strategies, which we do do. Because when you put a whole bunch of them together, obviously, 400 needs two or three, you can look at design build strategies. And we will do that in our implement implementation study.
Other questions? I know miss Ortiz Franklin is on by via Zoom, so I don't know, if you're around. Miss Ortiz Franklin. I wanna make a comment or a question, but wanna give that opportunity. I know we had Randy as well. And as they do it, other yeah. Mister Geier. I just wanna point out in in the vein of what you just mentioned, I looked in here, I noticed five different shade structures. And if it was narrowed down to one, Right? Like, almost like a kit of parts. I'm, like, less concerned about the design build and more of what would that do
to the planning costs. Right? If you have the same Exactly. Set of structure, like, you could probably I don't I I don't know what that would would Right. Reduce from 10% to two. I don't know. But when when we did the outdoor learning classrooms, the 2,000 square foot one that I referenced sometime today, we we did do a kit of parts. We went to each school and said we have six different models that you can choose. You choose from this, and then we could implement it faster. Less design time, less cost, less DSA time. Yeah. I mean, I've suggested and was told at a facilities workshop the board had a
few weeks ago that there would be state law that prevented this. But even hiring a strike team that is just, like, their only job. We're gonna be doing this for the next decade. And so hiring folks I mean, on one hand, you say the market would be more competitive, so we should do what you suggested, which I appreciate. But having a team that's dedicated to just you buy a 100 of these being internal? Internal. Oh, yeah. Like, just like all you do is you're the shade team. You go around in a, you know, one of our district trucks, and you got the kit of parts, and you start installing it. Or or you bid it like that. But the fact that we're bidding these individually and we have even the is it
the, Romer one coming to the board separately is just, I think, silly at this point now that there's this district wide project. Yeah. Miss Tokes. I did wanna emphasize that the district has not had a program before Measure US to do shade shelters. They have happened individually with board member discretionary funds or regional discretionary funds or, if there's another source of funds, which is why we have these onesies, twosies, and we haven't been able to determine what economies of scale.
Now we have this exciting program of we're going to put 50 out at the same time. We do plan on having it as a kit of parts to the extent that all of the play structures for the most part are the same size. So maybe there's a medium, large, and extra large, and then we're working with our contracting community to see, like, how do we bundle these by region, etcetera. So it is going to be a new model for us, one that we haven't had the opportunity to do before. And now that we are rolling out a new program, we can look at being
more efficient in both how they're procured and how they're implemented. Yeah. And looking at the ones we've already done. What are our lessons learned? I appreciate that. That is a good and important note that this like, when we do these discreetly, they're more difficult, and now that there's this investment and real, urgency. Anything, Steve? Oh, miss Tokes answered all my s and b five fifteen questions. Thank you. So I will I will codify some of these follow ups, but I do think it seems like there's interest, to just get more of a breakdown of the actual cost and some of the projects that are done and then identify where some of these barriers are.
Just in that spirit that miss Tokes was talking about of this prospective program, how do we try to significantly reduce the cost given that these are and and you can limit school site ingenuity and discretion to say, like, this is your option, but it's coming, and it will come in a year instead of ten, and it's gonna cost you a $150,000 all in instead of $450,000. But I I also will follow-up on some of these PC ones that I'm finding on the Internet to figure out why. So that we can look at that Yeah. With Matt. Indeed. Thank you all, for a very robust discussion.
We will now turn to public comment and thanks to those of you who stayed with us. It's 05:24 later than we anticipated, but we wanna hear those who have signed up to speak, and then we will adjourn. So appreciate it. Thank you. We have five speakers signed up to speak today. We will begin with our in person speakers. Victor Alia, are you in the room? You will have two minutes to speak. Hopefully, I could get this done in two minutes. Hi. I'm Victor Alia. My son is Mikey Alia. He's in kindergarten at Pali Elementary, And I have two other kids.
I have a two and a half year old and three month old that will also go to the new school when it's built. On November 19, LAUSD presented the most recent design and schedule update for the reconstruction of our school, which is tragically destroyed in the fire, as you all know, on January 7. During the meeting, many parents asked, why is the village school, a private school located across the street from Pali Elementary, able to rebuild and return students to campus a full year earlier. Village school scheduled to reopen in January 2028.
We are scheduled to return January 2029. The answer that we were given is a valid answer, which is that the one year delay is is the long and complex public bidding process required under public contracting code, public contract code 20111. Village School as a private institution is not bound, by this process, and they could also select their contractor immediately. LAUSD also mentioned they can't take the the same approach because of PCC two zero one six three, which prohibits splitting a public project into smaller components.
These are all items that you guys have touched on today, and that Assam and his team, mentioned. But, you know, when when superintendent Carvallo attended the initial community meeting, when we when, you know, back in March, I think it was, he stated unequivocally that he would not allow bureaucratic red tape to delay the school's rebuild. The current situation, illustrates precisely the kind of governmental procedural procedural barriers that create a one year disadvantage for the public school compared to the private school, despite us having
a a fully funded $136,000,000 reconstruction budget. So given that the school was destroyed in a catastrophic in a catastrophic fire, the situation clearly meets the definition of an emergency. So we're hoping that you guys can push, for this emergency condition to be granted and that so we could avoid public bidding, and separate the project into in, you know, into piecemeal submittals so that some work could get started. That's that's it. Thank you. We'll move on to our next speaker, Dustin Barmel.
Hi. I had a bunch of remarks prepared, but I think it's sort of a waste of time to go through them because you guys have sort of heard all of the elements of this. Two weeks ago, I drove by the village school, and I couldn't help but feel that I had chosen an inferior organization, as I saw the one year delta between the private schools and the public school. I'm the son of a firefighter. I'm a brother to firefighters and police officers, and I believe in public organizations. Ultimately, public organizations are the groups that do the things that private organizations cannot.
And so just as you think about, you know, moving this process along, I would just encourage you to think about that, that public organizations are the people that took us to the moon. They're the people that do these incredible things that private organizations cannot. And so I don't wanna be in this position in a, you know, few months where we come back to this board and have the same conversation about why we are disadvantaged by over a year from the private organizations. So with that, thank you. Next, we'll move on to our call and speakers. We'll go on with Maria Luisa Palma.
I see you on the line, missus Palma. Can you press star six to unmute yourself? Can you hear me? Yes. We can hear you. Thank you. My name is Maria Lisa Palma. I'm speaking on behalf of Olaudah Inc, a nonprofit organization. So the big question today is why does it cost so much to bill? So these shade structures, were taxpayers informed before voting for Measure US that you were planning to build shade structures made out of fabric that were gonna cost between 400 and 500,000 each?
I'll just say what I think a lot of people are thinking but won't say. That's insane, isn't it? I mean, is this prudent to spend this kind of money? We heard at that time of Measure US that there are $80,000,000,000 in unmet facilities needs. So how was that calculated? We're waiting to hear and see a report be made public to show us the full list of needs. Mister Malvoin, I hope that you can get that here. I think we want to see what is the full list of projects that need to be done. And I hope you can hold on to these, approvals for these shape structures.
It sounds like there are many unanswered questions. Now moving on to other issues. In the local control and accountability plan, Full four, one of the metrics included there, for facilities, is 100 of facilities that are a good repair or better. Basically, that comes out as true that we have met that. That's based on the SARC, the school accountability report card. Is that really true though, that a 100% of facilities are in great repair? We hear lots of things about HVAC systems and so forth.
Isn't there a better standard for measuring that? So I just heard from Paris this week that a roof fell in on a bathroom with all these rain. I told her you need to file a Williams complaint. She doesn't know about that. I hope you can use the presentation time here, mister Maboyne, to bring forth how the Williams complaint works, the timeline, reporting to us. What are the Williams complaints? What kinds of issues are in there? How long does it take for service calls, etcetera? We need some transparency around that. Remember, LCAP stands for the Local Control and Accountability Plan.
Please bring up accountability on the facility. Thank you. We have two more in person speakers. Ben Anbinder. Hi. Good evening, everyone. I'm Ben Einbinder. I am the father of a daughter who's a kindergartner at Palley Elementary, and my son is currently in pre k at Methodist Preschool. As you know, both schools burned down. My son, Max, will be at Pali next year, for kindergarten. And so, my wife is one of the co chairs of PEP, which is the parent organization, and she's been essentially a full time, parent participant volunteer in the school.
She was at Netflix for eight years making well over half $1,000,000 and gave that up to help our school. There's three points I would like to address, with all of you as we proceed down the path of remediation and rebuild. Number one, you know, as we think about we've heard about village being a year ahead. What I would suggest to you is let's focus on reasonable expedites. If we increase this timeline by four months, we start the 2028 school here at the school. That is a massive, massive change from the current timeline to what it will be.
I I anticipate having my house rebuilt, ready to attend that school in August 2028, and I hope all of you were there to welcome us back into those doors. With respect to the remediation, I was also at the design meeting several weeks ago, and I heard some concerning things. Number one, the HVAC units and the ducting on the school are currently in the plans to stay. I think you all should look closely into that and ask yourselves if you'd love to have your kids attend a school with smoke and ash that we're just gonna clean as as opposed to replacing with a $134,000,000 budget.
So I'd I'd appreciate if you could all take a look at that. Another one, the kitchen. Again, we've got a $135,000,000 budget at apparently 6 or $7,000 a square foot, and we've been told we can't afford to put in new kitchen facilities in our schools. So for the next hundred years, like Nick said, we're gonna put plastic containers and microwave the food that's free for our kids and feed that to them. So as we think through all of these things, I would just ask you to consider those three points. Thank you. Our next speaker is Lexi Monte.
Hi. My name is Lexi Monte. I also have, a one and four year old, who are gonna be home and ready to go to school in August 2027. So we won't have a school near us, private or public. And I think for a lot of our rebuilding of the community, 60% of the lots are for sale. 30% have sold. We don't have an accurate view of whether that's to builders and flippers or to families. It's a mix. But what that means is people won't come back and won't come home because they can't because we don't have facilities like schools.
And for a lot of us, we chose public school. I went to public school and ended up at an Ivy League institution. It's possible. And we believe in what made me so emotional hearing Dustin speak in public education. And, also, we can't always afford private education. So we have limited options coming back to the Palisades. So that's a little emotional. I apologize. I know we're hitting time, but what I wanted to get at were three questions. And I am naive in coming here sort of as a Pollyanna and realizing in this experience, I can't get answers. I guess it's just a comment, but I would love to ask the questions anyway
and perhaps if anyone feels so moved to help the community answer them later. A small, medium, and large question. The small question is for us to understand who are the main bidders. If there's really only two builders, like, who are they, and what's the roadblock? Do you have to have a special license bond permit to build for government or security clearance? Because a lot of us are really well known professionals in the community, and we could help find behemoth companies who might be interested in bidding if we could help alleviate roadblocks. My next question was, I can't remember the medium.
Oh, yes. It was about listening to all these people talk about green spaces and shade and what is the inter sort of conversation or relationship between people who understand that there are laws in California called zone zero. And as, mister D'Aula mentioned in his in his presentation, there's a distance from certain trees and greenery to the structures, and everybody else gets to talk about temperature and shade and the positive effects of trees on children's health. There's anxiety and other studies about nature.
But for us, we have to live in a concrete jungle. So hoping you guys are investigating pushing back on zone zero or pushing back on the design, allowing our kids to also have nature. And then the big question, was again, I'm a Pollyanna. I know you're all experienced here, so I apologize, but I'm in shock. What can we do to take a step back? You're all so busy dealing with the day to day. But on the larger scale, how do we take a step back and talk to Sacramento? Because the state mandates and the state laws allowing people to charge 7 fucking thousand
dollars a square foot when a private school was just completed in West Los Angeles for $450 is egregious, and our children deserve that money in programs, not in building. Okay. Sorry. Thank you. Our next speaker is David Takhovsky. David Takhovsky, you are signed up to speak as a call in, but I don't see you online. Are you in the room? David Takhovsky. Okay. Our next speaker is Maria Daisy Ortiz. You are also signed up to speak online, but I do not see you. Are you in the room?
Maria, Daisy, or I do not see her in the room. Okay. This concludes public comment. Great. Thank you all. And, yes, the nature of public comment is not the most kind of, conversational, but I saw miss Tokes taking notes. And I think everyone here knows how to reach me in our office. And so those questions and suggestions, we will, take into consideration for sure. Thank you. Appreciate kind of, ending on the note of what is possible in public facilities. I remember, Christina, you and I and others, the week of the fires, we're talking about this is a real opportunity for public schools to shine, and within eight days,
we had schools relocated and and Marquez is back. And I think we're hearing things that align with some of the questions this committee has to do all we can to get families back and to get green space and to get shade structures and all of that. So thank you to the committee. Thanks to the staff for their engagement. Our next committee meeting is 02/24/2026. So I know I'll see many of you, but have a happy holiday and see you all next year. And with that, we will adjourn. Thank you all.