e board's work session. It's the second work session for the recommended fiscal year 2027 capital budget, and the fiscal year 2027 to 2032 Capital Improvement Plan. I will begin
by asking board members to introduce themselves for the record. Laura Stewart from district four. Good morning. Rita montoya, board member at large. Good morning, Brenda Wolff, district five. Good morning. Buenos dias. Good Rivera-Oven representing
district one. Good morning. Karla Silvestre, school board member at large. Good morning. A new student, member of the board, Julie Yang, district three. Thank you, everyone, for being here. Today's work session is the second opportunity for the board to ask questions and provide
feedback on the superintendent's recommended plan. The board appreciates the feedback he has received on the recommended CIP during public hearings, and continue to welcome additional comments. Now, before we begin, I want to take a brief moment to express
my appreciation to our staff. Each of you have invested a great deal of time, care, and expertise in preparing for today's session. This is a lot, and for the first time you are answering the question in the
open sessions, right? Your work reflects not only professionalism, but a deep commitment to our students and community. And I thank you for that. Now, as a board, our conversation can and should be
robust. We asked difficult questions because we care deeply about the outcomes, but we also model the culture of respect and collaboration that we expect across our system. It's important that our dialog,
even in the moments of disagreement, reflect our shared values. Listening with empathy and focusing on solutions. Now let's continue to work together in that spirit, challenging ideas when needed,
but always lifting up the people who make our work possible. Now, for our community out there at large, individual interested in providing the board with additional feedback on the recommended CIP may still
continue to submit comments in writing or through video to BOE testimony at M.C.P.S. MD video submissions make it no more than three minutes, but can be
supported by additional written comments. Comments that are received by noon will continue to receive your comments. Please submit by noon on Monday, November 10th. Will be posted on board docs and considered by the board in making its
decisions. So there are many ways for you to continue to engage in this conversation. Okay, on November 11th, the board will hold the third work session to further consider feedback received from the
public and the responses to board member requests for the information, and then the. At our November 20th business meeting, the board will take action on the fiscal year of
2027, capital budget appropriation and the fiscal year 2027 State Capital Improvement Program requests, and also the whole six year plan. So, Doctor Taylor, now I will turn it over for your
presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. Members of the board and I will come up and join you momentarily. But I do want to start here and offer some additional context to some of the things that we've already presented. This is really an opportunity for us to
do a couple of things. The first thing is really to dive in deep on some of the ideas that we introduced in a very thick and very comprehensive plan, and to do so with a lot of seriousness and a lot of focus, because these are serious decisions that do
require a lot of focus and a lot of attention. Not all of the news in our capital improvement program and our capital budget is happy news. These are topics with great gravity, and we want to give that its due time and attention.
But in just a few moments, I will join you up on the dais to to review the question and answer part, which is also the a critical component of today's presentation. We have some answers to questions that have already been asked at public
hearings, and we are really excited to illuminate some of those topics today. To kick us off is Andrea Sueoka, who is our deputy chief of facilities. Along with her is D.J. Conolly. And of course, Adnan Mamoon.
And we're going to be your team. That helps answer some questions today. Good morning, board members. I'm going to kick us off with highlights and remind us where we are in the recommended CIP. So this request overall is asking for
$2.7 billion. We have a new prioritization framework that was released as part of this CIP. We've been talking a lot about life cycle planning, and while this is a six year CIP, we've been talking about it for the 20 year extended life and really building a much larger
and robust CIP for years to come. We have many countywide initiatives that we have not quite gotten to all of them, and we will hopefully in the third work session. We also are always keeping in mind sustainability for energy efficiency as we think about
any project, both a full replacement renewal renovation and even our countywide projects. And then we also have non-capital actions in this proposal, things like an elementary boundary study as well. With that, I'll take us to today's agenda. So we have a
long and robust agenda. We do plan to pause after a couple of the sections. So we'd like to get through ideally enrollment review and the countywide elementary boundary. And then happy to pause for questions. Then we will walk through slides on Silver Spring International Middle School and Sligo Creek Elementary School,
and then happy to pause for questions. We also will be discussing Crown High School, Carver or CSC replacement, alternative capital financing. Additional details on the CIP prioritization data, district infrastructure projects. And then we have follow up
responses to several of the questions that have been asked so far. You can see what we covered in the first work session back on October 14th. And we also have just two bullets. I imagine we will expand on that as we go today, but for now, our current thinking for the third work session is to cover the
countywide projects that we have not to date, and also follow up on additional questions that are asked today or over the course of the next week. And again, happy to expand on that as we go today. And we can add agenda items. As we do with anything here and
the facilities world. Always be mindful of aligning our work back to the strategic plan, specifically goal three for us, making sure that we provide a safe, welcoming and inclusive learning and work environment for our students and our staff. And then just to orient
everyone where we are today. Since October 13th, we have had a number of different work sessions, virtual listening sessions and in-person session at the warehouse. Two public hearings. We are here on November 4th for our second work session. Miss Yang talked about the written and video
comments. Deadline. By November 10th. Our third and final work session will be next Tuesday, November 11th with your board action followed on November 20th. And with that, I'm going to pass it back to Doctor Taylor to take us through the first two sections. We are very
proud of presenting to you a CIP proposal that is aligned to our strategic plan and does extend past the six year thinking that normally traps some capital improvement plans
and really positions the school district to solve a lot of its long term and long range issues if you could advance the next slide. But one of the things that we are dealing with is a really significant change in our school system right now.
And for most of us, we have known an M.C.P.S. that has gone through really unprecedented growth over the last several decades. The last time that there was really any meaningful
retrenchment was in the early 2000, and it was a very small amount of retrenchment. And even during that period of time, we were growing in a number of schools. But what I would like to do is take us back even further. Now it seems hard to believe, but in the year 1950,
we only had 48 schools and our footprint of our school system was one fifth the size that it is today. And relatively speaking, that is very small compared to what we are today. And over a 15 year period of
time, we grew 155 schools that were built. That's really amazing when you think about it, that we grew over 100,000 students and we added 155
schools just in a little over a decade and a half. That was known as the baby boom. And it definitely reflected our growth as a county. And then subsequently, we experienced what was called the baby bust
and the decade that followed, we lost a really significant number of students. Nearly 36,000 students came out of our school system, and the pattern of growth dramatically changed. And as a consequence of that,
we closed 60 schools and we spent the next three plus decades growing back to the portfolio that we had in 1970. So what this means for us, and if you could advance the next
slide, is that we have to be sensitive to where we are today. We are already almost 10,000 students fewer than our peak in 2019, and we are projected to lose even more students, according to planning
department data. And we think that that data has a tremendous amount of veracity that we need to start planning ahead for what that looks like. That's 10% of our student population in just over a decade. And I
know that it's painful to talk about and to even think about school closure and to think about consolidation because it is painful. It's believe me, this is not something that I would want to spend any meaningful amount of time committed to talking about. I wish that I didn't have to make
this recommendation, and certainly I wish that this board didn't have to consider this as an option. But this will not be the last school that is brought up for consideration for consolidation, especially when these numbers
have proven to have the veracity that they've had over the past six years. If you could advance the next slide, looking at our capacity, we know that we are growing in some areas of the county and we're shrinking in other areas of the county, and we have to
be sensitive to that. Looking at where we have capacity right now, you may look at your neighborhood elementary school and say, oh my gosh, there's no way in heck that that there's even an inch of capacity in this school. And I, in many of ,
that is absolutely the case. And you may look at your middle school and say, my gosh, there isn't a room to breathe in the hallway, and it's jam packed. That is not the experience of every school in Montgomery County. And that really is our responsibility, that when we're
looking at things like boundaries and we're looking at things like facilities use that, we try to right size the district to the amount of facilities that we have to get the best utilization and run the most efficient school system we can and be good stewards of the tax dollar. One
of the things that we are doing that will have a dramatic and positive impact on our high school capacity, which right now we're under high school capacity, is adding capacity in the form of high school seats. This this will have a dramatic impact. But what you will see
is that even by adding capacity at high school seats, we will still run a significant surplus because our dynamic is changing. So to that end, this is at the very high level and this is aggregate across the county and
will definitely dive in and go school by school so that you can see when we when we look at the next phase of this, which is to do an elementary study and to to do, of course, the boundary studies that are already underway. But this tells us that we can do a
better job of making sure that we are efficiently balancing the boundaries of our schools, that we are reducing our reliance on portable classrooms in a lot of areas. It makes no
sense for us to have the capacity that we have right now. Over a 20,000 student projected capacity and still utilize portable classrooms when, when realistically, we could just do a better job of rightsizing our
our our school boundaries. If you could advance the next slide. So as with anything, when there's a problem to solve, of course we we ask Google. But truthfully, we could ask our friends at ChatGPT to to give
us a little bit of context to this. And none of this will surprise anyone when there are times of financial stress, when there's under-utilization and there's building maintenance issues, this is the time that you should be looking at how you can consolidate your
portfolio of buildings. Right now, we have a very large footprint of 238 buildings, not all of which we use, not all of which we need. And now is really the time that we need to be looking at forecasting what our future needs might be and
how we can be better using those resources and those assets for a long term gain. Next slide please. Thank you. We're not the only ones going through this. As a matter of fact, across the country, student enrollment continues to
shrink. As a matter of fact, these headlines that we pulled from a number of of not just education publications, but also major media outlets reflect a change in population in the United States. And, of
course, Montgomery County is not insulated from that. And as a consequence of that, we are we are looking at making some of these changes as well, being sensitive to that. Next slide, please. So one of our major
recommendations in this capital improvement program was to take a look at our elementary boundaries. And it is in the context of looking at how we might be more efficient and how we might balance student populations. We have a couple of elementary schools that you
all know that are very, very large, and their population does not fit the building that they're in right now. And and it is worth us taking a look at. And then there are several buildings that are underutilized. So we do have a
couple of of timelines for you to look at in this proposal. And this would be a separate scope of work that we would ask the board to consider. And, and, and we have one timeline that
concludes August of, of 26 into November of 26, in terms of the substantive work, with a decision point in March of 2028, that seems like it's a really far away away. But the reality is, is that it's not. It is
within this CIP window. And to do something of this magnitude really does take that amount of time. Next slide please. Some if you want to go to the next one. Oh okay. Thanks. The not
recommended timeline would be to accelerate this by one year and to to fast track this. We we recognize that there might be some urgency with the board. And I know that that some board members might be curious as to
what this timeline might look like if we were to do it very quickly. And if we were to do this by by March of 2027, I would prefer not to do this route. But this is what that timeline would look like if we were to to pursue this on a
more fast track approach. Next slide please. So with that I'm going to pause and I'm going to join you up on the dais and return this to Andrea Sueoka. But before we do, we want to pause at this moment and say
ask if there are any questions with enrollment. I know that we've already talked about enrollment quite a bit, and that this next topic, it may be more germane if we just roll right into it. It seems like that is where the board is at. Okay. So no, no lights. And we'll go into this topic and
then and then stop for questions after this topic and go from there. So Miss Whitaker. Sounds good. Thank you. So hopefully Doctor Taylor sort of set up the larger picture that we are seeing across the county. We now want to take some time
with you all. And we as staff and the superintendent have received a number of questions about where our recommendation came for in terms of Silver Spring International Middle School, which you might hear us refer to as Sims, in addition to Sligo Creek. While they overlap, they do end in two
different recommendations. So they are combined facility. We want to walk through that facility. And this relates to both of those schools. And then again, the recommendation of where they both go and move forward is different. So we wanted to break it up into four different factors that we were
looking at. As we came to this recommendation, we looked at the facility condition. And again, it's one big facility for both Sligo Creek and Silver Spring International. We looked at the declining enrollment, both specific to that middle school as well as the neighboring, and then
countywide, some of the numberso looked and are constantly looking at the availability of holding facilities, also known as swing spaces, right where the students go temporarily while their school is under construction. And we also want to talk about the opportunity here with the transition plan
and what this means. We've gotten a number of questions about programs that exist at both of those schools. What does that mean? What are the opportunities for the transition? Is it abrupt? Is it grade by grade? And what additional support could be provided for both the staff and the student? So we're going to
walk through each of those in a number of slides. So for those who are not as familiar with the original building, and we have a graphic on the next slide that we'll show, it was originally built in 1934, and since then there has been numerous additions. And I will not read off each year for you,
but hopefully just the list and the comma year after year sort of paints a picture of how many appendages there are to this facility. We continuously experience ongoing significant work order issues related to HVAC, electrical, plumbing,
both the domestic lines as well as roof leaks. HVAC often then ties to indoor air quality concerns, mold concerns, and this is not uncommon for a building like this, right? That has had so many different additions. You know, there's potential for leaks where those
additions have been added over time to that facility, in addition to just the work orders, there's just general wear and tear of these. We have operational challenges such as the circulation challenges, particularly on the middle school side. We have accessibility challenges, and we've certainly tried to
continuously address as many of these as we can over the years, but we have not solved for all of them. There's pedestrian safety. There's the size of both the cafeterias at both the elementary and middle school, the distance to the playing field that is actually parks playing field, and the path
that the students have to travel. And at this moment, sort of looking at the facility condition, we do feel that it has reached its end of its useful life as a permanent school. Taking all of that into consideration. And we've shared with you the CIP prioritization.
Right. Sort of the ranking of 1 to 52. Even knowing that, knowing all the challenges, I know many of you have been there. We have staff, have been there many times to try to address many of these. It still did not fall incredibly high on the overall prioritization list. It's number 43 currently, and
so we wanted to think creatively about a different plan for these students, both at the elementary and middle school, to really have the best learning environment. If you take a look at this slide, this just starts to articulate the the 1934, a sort of the fuchsia
pink color that is closest to the elementary school playground on the east side of the property, close to the tennis courts. And then you can start to see all the additions that have been built over time. The 1970 is where the science wing is, and that also includes what the auditorium that we
demolished and the two new gymnasiums that were built by the new loop. You can see the purple line down below. So next we wanted to sort of dig in on enrollment. We shared slides under the enrollment section about the larger county as a whole. But let's talk
specifically about middle school as well as the five middle schools closest in this geographic area. So as of the preliminary enrollment as of September 30th, we are at 35,386 middle school students. We are seeing a decline over
the next six years of about 2500 middle school students in this six year. If you then look at Eastern Odessa, Shannon, Sims, Sligo and Takoma Park, you can see that all of those across the board continue to show declining enrollment and that there will be available
seats in those five schools. So next on our list that we talked about. So we talked about facility condition. We talked about enrollment opportunity and the decline that's happening. There is the availability of holding facilities. And wanted to bring this map back up for everyone
we currently have. We talk about it as five. But Emory Grove there in the orange is an existing. We previously used that as a holding school. We are converting that to a permanent early childhood center. So the other four existing holding centers that
we have in our portfolio are North Lake, Grosvenor, Radnor and Fairlawn Center. There is no secondary holding facility. I know we currently are using Woodward for Northwood, but that will turn into a comprehensive high school. And
certainly we are talking about Crown in the upcoming section. Outside of those, again, no additional. We did look at other facilities that are board owned that the county might currently operate, Broome Junior High being one of those. And while that is something we could take back, it is not a
facility that is ready for us to move in. It would take significant capital investment to bring that back online. I know that has been looked at every couple of years, year over year. It is a great opportunity in the future. But given our fiscal constraints right now, that would cost quite a bit to bring that
online. The other thing to keep in mind too, is portions of the existing facility are historic in nature, and several of them are on the Maryland Historic Preservation list. And so we would need to work closely to and thinking about any demolition that occurs on this
site. We I'm going to jump you back, likely the 1934 and the 1950. So those along the tennis courts and along Wayne Avenue would need to stay as a minimum. We would need to go through the process, but it is unlikely that we could just completely
demolish the facility given its historic nature. The last bullet and then the other key piece right in all of this too, is the the connection with parks. That field that our students currently use is Park Zone. So if we want to use that for any both temporary
consideration, whether we want to relocate tables there or build anything permanent that would need to be done in partnership with parks, not something that is out of the opportunity for us. We do this on a number of different sites, but it is a very challenging, very narrow land there in terms
of entry in and out. This is probably even a better map to start to highlight some of the challenges. So just for the sake of really digging in and thinking about this, where might an opportunity be to even place portable classrooms
knowing that we would need to keep part of the existing building, which is shaded there in the black, potentially we could demolish some of it. We think sort of the best opportunity is to put it on where the existing playground is and the tennis courts, and even that is quite challenging.
We would likely need to bring them into the field where again, which is parks, they're outlined in sort of that blue color and crane them up if you've been there. Right. The the bleachers are sort of terraced into the hillside that take you from the tennis courts to the field. You would need to
crane up and over that to get the portable. So this is not an easy, flat site for us to just sort of we'll in portables, set them, play some walkway and cycle students in and out. It is an incredibly complex site. And then even by doing that to you know, when we talked a
little bit about this too, with Wooten and Magruder. Right. If you're going to move a portion, maybe a quarter of the school into these portables, that's going to take you several additional years to renew the facility. So if they're staying on site, you're only going to be able to do portions of the
building at a time, whether you're completely renewing and gutting the inside of it or whether you're building an addition. Okay, one of the next questions has been just about funding. What would it cost to do any of this? Since this wasn't in our recommended, we
did not provide those initial costs. But we you know, given the number of questions we have, we thought it would be helpful for you all to see these. So the cost below only reflect construction costs if the students and staff were off site. I think that's really important to take into consideration, remembering that
we do not have that ability at this time to do. But these costs are only for construction. This is a very complicated project, right? So if we want to do this phased, occupied, like we were just showing with the portables, that would be above and beyond the dollar amounts that you see here and
would require several years of that phased occupancy. We'd need to trench on those portables to provide restrooms and other amenities that are needed. We've given the square footage specific to Silver Spring International Middle School and to Sligo Creek. You can see those in parentheses.
Roughly 154,000 is dedicated to the middle school, and 87,000 is dedicated to the elementary school. So if we just looked at the SIM side only and we did a major capital project there in today's dollars, if we started planning next year in FY 27, we
would anticipate the preliminary costs to be $145 million. These are very high level preliminary costs. But again keeping in mind that where they are and the overall CIP prioritization, they would not be in our FY 27 proposal.
Right. They are much further down on the list. And so we don't know the years to come of the next sequence. It depends on how many are funded in this and how many more we can get in the years to come. But we just provided sort of an out year with cost escalation. If you move them out to FY 2035, given
the cost escalation that comes with construction, we're talking upwards of 200,000,215 or more. Just again, for the SIM side, we did very similar FY 27 and FY 35 as two examples. If we did the entire facility, both the Sims and the Sligo
Creek Elementary, and we show those at 240 million and 350 million. So we wanted to give a few other maps and analysis of, again, the availability of the holding facilities. So and we'll zoom in. I know this is
really hard to read, but wanted to just show this map gives you a three mile radius, the circle in green, and then a five mile in that yellow of how many elementaries are near this. Right. Just to kind of give you a scale of how many could
benefit from a holding facility in that. Now, some of these schools might be closer to Grosvenor, and we would need to look at all of those. But just purely looking at that three and five mile radius. And I'll just pause here, just zooms in a little bit so you can kind of
see it. The black is where the current facility is. We can always come back to these and I'll keep us moving. We did a similar analysis to look at the middle schools at that three and five mile radius. And it's important to note that the
schools such as Argyle, Banneker, Briggs, Chaney, Lederman, Parkland Middle School are all relatively close should they need a major capital project in the future. And then we zoomed in for you as well on this one. Okay. And
then we also wanted to talk about a preliminary thought on a transition plan. Should the recommendation be to move forward with a closure. And again, the closure is only specific. I think that's another thing that they are getting confused between the two, rightfully so. This is a lot of information for people.
The recommendation is the closure for Sims and a relocation of Sligo Creek. So this transition plan is specific to Sims. It is not part of the Sligo Creek conversation. We'll get to that in the next section. Student programs. That is a really
important and important topic for both the students and the parents here. And really the theme here is Replicate and expand, right? We want to build upon the incredible IB program that is there, the French and Spanish Immersion program. The intent is not to take those
away, but should the students go to Sligo Middle School or Eastern or any other school that is decided, they would have the opportunity for these programs to continue on either at both or one of those schools. The transition plan for students. This would be made
part of the boundary study and a final plan would be decided. We do not need to determine that final plan today. We're just sort of putting out ideas to you. But what does it look like from a student transition? Right? We could end the school at the end of all of this discussion in the upcoming
years to come. And everyone disperses at the sixth, seventh and eighth grade. Or we could do it slowly and gradually grade by grade. So as we get three years out from the closure, that would be the last cohort of sixth grade. And then the next year, the school year, they would only have seventh and eighth grade and then you
would end. So essentially, students are starting to be dispersed year over year and sort of a three year transition plan. We do need to make sure from a capacity standpoint that we can handle this. This is a little bit easier to do at Sligo Middle School than it is at eastern. So that's something we as staff need to look
closely at. But it's it's a proposal we'd like to consider to sort of help with a smooth transition. And then it's really important that we support our staff in all of this. Right? Our teachers, our fundamental we don't envision any of these positions going away, but we want them to be a part of these new middle school
opportunities. So we have done a few different projects over the years, and I just want to recap for everyone. The most recent project that we did was the middle school addition project, right where we were relocating the where, and we have it circled there in red.
That is the field house or the standalone physical education and athletics were outside the main building. We were trying to relocate that to the west side of the property so that they were joined, and that we didn't lose as much transition time. This project and the pieces included the two
gymnasiums, the new main entrance, the renovated lobby, Ada improvements was a total of a little over $28 million. While doing that project, other things came up that we tried to consider as a part of that, and due to the funding, we were not
able to include that. So the slate roof came up. This is an incredibly expensive type of roof, given the historic nature. Our typical, if it were just our typical built up flat roof, would have cost us about 2.5 million. This is a $16 million roof that it costs. We know there are challenges with
stairwell number seven. We need to continue to try to address those to solve for both the circulation safety and egress. We talked about linkages to learning and creating new spaces for that. Also upgrading the science labs. The historic
facade just needs restoration as a whole across that, particularly on the Wayne Avenue side. And then the cafeteria size and line of sight has been ongoing issues that are quite complex, that also need to be permanently solved. And so several of these improvements would require
extensive work beyond just a summer break. What we can complete in the eight weeks, really underscoring the need for some type of holding facility to make these improvements happen. And so the bottom line of everything that we just shared was that there are structural and site conditions that certainly
frustrate. We've heard it from the community over and over. You all have heard it and we have heard it. That cannot be resolved while students are in there. And so despite sort of repeated effort over many years, we have not made this satisfactory permanent school experience has not been
achieved. But we feel that the building structure and the facility condition are adequate and appropriate for temporary use, such as the need for the swing space to make construction possible for other schools in the downtown Down County and the Silver Spring
area. Also wanted to highlight some of the recent besides just the gymnasium additions, recent and anticipated projects. So in 2021, we completed a fire alarm upgrade. 2024 Kitchen Serving Lines 2025 A generator installation. We repaired the
tennis courts in 2025 as well. We are still committed to this facility regardless whether it is permanent students or a holding school. Upgrades need to continue, just not at the scale that we think are deserved for a permanent facility. We anticipate using
FY 26 funding that we will renovate the restrooms on both the SIM side and the Sligo Creek. We have a partial roof replacement that is funded through the Healthy Schools program. We also plan to paint both sides, both sides, so the elementary and the middle school on a switchgear
replacement, which is your main electrical equipment that provides electrical distribution throughout the school. Light. This change in the FAA regulation under
Educational Facility Planning and the Maryland Code of Regulation 13 a we do need to provide written notification of schools under consideration for closure. We need a public hearing to allow for oral and written testimony. And at a final decision announced at a
public session and in writing. And I think this is key. You all, on November 20th are not going through the school closure process. Right? That is not what you are voting on. What we're voting on is just the CIP. It was important for us to include this as part of
it, because we have added capacity at eastern and construction dollars to accommodate this, but you are not voting on the school closure at this time. We will go through a separate and formal process for that to happen. Okay. And then there's a lot of information on here,
but we wanted to overlay the three different impacted middle schools at this time. So the yellow one on the bottom is Eastern Middle School. We show the two years of planning, the two years of construction, and then when the new building would open in August of 2030,
the dark navy blue is Sligo Middle School. We show the two years of planning, one year of additions and construction would start while students are on staff. Then those students would move over to the new holding facility at Sims to complete the renewal project
inside. And then the new building would open with the expanded capacity. So including the existing Sligo Middle School students and the Sims students that would be redistricted to there. And sort of the teal color in the middle shows you how long we anticipate Sims would remain
open until all these different changes would take place, both with eastern and with Sligo Middle School. Again, we've been receiving a number of different community concerns and wanted to just articulate a few of those. And I am going to
probably just read some of this, which is I hate reading off slides just to kind of frame it so that you all can hear the questions too. So why Sims? Why Sligo Creek? Why our community M.C.P.S. has neglected us for years. So like many other schools, Sims was long overdue
for necessary upgrades, experiencing delays in multiple SIPs. Unlike other buildings, they were split and chopped for a larger building into two buildings, and their site cannot handle a replacement while on site. The maze of wayfinding, along with infrastructure needs coupled with operational challenges,
make it an ideal candidate for school closure and for it to be repurposed. The second question what makes the building a better holding school versus a school that our community can use? While the building has many challenges that are listed above, the challenges are much easier to navigate for a finite
period of time, which for middle school, receiving a construction project would be 1 to 2 years. All students would be bused to campus, eliminating a number of safety concerns related to the Purple Line, the location it is ideally situated in, between many Down County elementary and middle school
schools that could benefit and that need upgrades. And in order for MCPs to execute its long term facility renovation, more holding schools are necessary to ensure quicker, more cost effective facility upgrades that can affect more students at large. As enrollment declines, budgets
remain stagnant and buildings deteriorate. M.C.P.S. must utilize assets to the best of our ability, and we have just two additional questions. Again, these are sort of themes that we have seen based on the emails and the comments that we have been receiving. Does M.C.P.S. plan on selling the
land building to a developer? The answer is no per M.C.P.S. regulation. Disposition of Board of Education property, the disposal of school property and state law and policy. DNA management of BOE property. Maryland Law governs governs the disposition of real
property. The property shall be transferred by the board to the county. And the second question why does Sligo Creek Elementary School have to move if Sims is closing? So again, we're going to jump next to Sligo Creek because our recommendation is
different than what it is for Sims, but it still falls in the same categories of facility conditions. Everything we just outlined above represents both schools. We still have significant safety concerns represented by the Purple Line, and there are many other elementary schools that we
think could benefit from having both an elementary school and a middle school holding facility here in this down County Silver Spring location. So with that, I know that was a lot of this. This section is shorter, so I'd like to get through just these couple slides so we can have a
joint conversation about both schools okay. So we're going to jump over again everything related to facility condition that we just walked through applies to Silver Creek. But the recommendation is different. For this one. We are proposing a site selection and a replacement school for the elementary. And so we wanted to
walk. We've gotten a lot of questions of what does that mean? What does the process look like? How do we go through that? And that's really what this section is about. So the following factors are listed in the MCPs regulation are considered when evaluating potential new sites. So we take into account the location
relative to the existing and future student population. It does not have to be exactly in the existing boundary, but we certainly want it to be as close as possible. We take into account topography and other environmental characteristics, availability of utilities. Ideally, the public owned
properties are priority, such as former schools and parks. Availability and timing to acquire. Should we consider any privately owned facility cost to acquire those and sites must be acquired through the dedication or purpose and place
in the Board of Education's inventory. So we wanted to just throw out a tenant. We're going to put a whole caveat into this, but the tentative initial partial sites that we are preliminarily exploring right now, this has been a hot topic
for everyone, and I know the community is very interested. These are some of the initial sites that we are considering, Forest Grove Elementary, which we currently have tenants in McDonald Knoll Elementary, which we currently use for early childhood. So we would need to reconsider or co-locate them on that site. Parkside
elementary is currently vacant. We have the former site of Silver Spring International Neighborhood Park, Woodside Elementary, Blair Local Park, the old Silver Spring Library site, the local, another motel,
local park, North Four Corners Park, and any additional commercial office space that we are able to consider from a leasing standpoint. So what does this mean in terms of site selection? So you two are not this is not the time, and you
do not have to make this decision on the November 20th. We need to go through a formal site selection process. And that's what this slide is about. So we will take a look at that list. We're still evaluating. Are there any additional sites that we can consider. And here is a tentative proposal depending on where the vote
lands in November 20th, we anticipate that we would come to the community with a presentation and a feedback session sometime in January. We'd likely do an in-person and a virtual option to present those initial sites. We would then take that to you all as a work session in February. We'd
have the opportunity for public hearings in February as well, and then the board could take action in March on one of these proposed sites. We would give you the recommendation that we come to based on the feedback that we receive. And finally, I
just wanted to remind everyone of what is currently in the CIP in terms of the timeline. So it's important that we move quickly through that site selection process, making sure we have proper engagement in in the winter and into the spring, so that come the start of the
fiscal year, which is July 1st for us, that we could kick off the planning and design part, we anticipate that to last about 18 months, and that the construction for the new school to take about 18 months and the school would be ready for opening in August of 2029. And that's important so that we can
start to move in new schools into their previous facility as a new holding school. Okay, I think that's it. So let me pause there and happy to take questions on both Sims and Sligo Creek. Thank you
colleagues. We are going to go for questions and comments because we still have a lot this morning. So I will ask you to be short on comments, but heavy on questions so that we can get answers. We're going to
go one round and then everyone have one comment, one question. Then we can go to the second round. All right. So we are going to start from Miss Stewart. Go ahead. First of all comment. Thank you for giving
some answers to a lot of questions that we are getting from the community. There was a lot here, so I don't have time right now to look at all the questions and check them off. But there is a big one and that is the engagement opportunity.
So I've we've heard a lot that Sims really would like a full discussion with staff about the project. Also, seeing that we need to do the school closure
process, this is like part B to my question on engagement. Yes, which is page 32. There's written notification, public hearing allow for written testimony. Final decision
announced at public session which would would this part of the engagement happen after November 20th? Yes. And will there be engagement prior to November 20th? Yes, yes. And my
last question is with this, we want to make sure this isn't just checking boxes, because this process will get lots of feedback. And we have a lot of creative people. I don't know if you've noticed in Montgomery County, and there might be something that comes up. I
don't know, because we haven't had the process. Would there be time to revisit this plan after November 20th, after we get all of this feedback in? So I'll chime in on all of that. Yes,
yes, yes and yes. So this part of the CIP process isn't concluded until the spring, because the county executive will also propose a budget for capital needs. And this will also be effectively ratified at
the county council level. And then come back to the Board of Education for final ratification as part of its end budget process, including the operating budget. So there there is a lot of steps that go with this process. We are in
the process of announcing some engagements for next week with the Sims community. That will be the first of many, because this process, as you can see, is is lengthy. It's lengthy by design. It's it's a heavy
decision that needs to be made. And unfortunately, as I mentioned before, this board will will become accustomed to this process in multiples. The the Sims proposal is just one
of several that the board is likely to experience over the next several years in evaluating its portfolio, and that that exercising this school closure process, this will not be the only time that we have this discussion. Thank you. That ends this line of
questioning. But I hope we get another round. Miss Montoya, thank you so much. What happens if the council does not approve basically all the funding? Right. Because I think that's we can have all you know, I'm
not saying this is not a good idea or a bad idea. Nothing like that. But just so that the community understands, and I think that kind of goes a little bit to miss Stewart's point as well. If the county says as sometimes they do, sorry, it's not in the budget, then what happens as a practical matter? So I'll take
that one. Thank you. So there is, as Doctor Taylor was saying, this is the beginning of a very long process. And throughout that process there will be various points in time at which the affordability markers and the expenditure recommendations do have a little bit of a back and forth. So the County
executive will be the following. The board's action. The County executive is the first one to put out sort of what an affordability marker might be. That will give us an opportunity then to to determine sort of how we need to start moving through a prioritization process. But really, until the council
begins to shape up towards its final funding decisions, that's really when, again, the staff working with the board and the council would come to make new priorities for how we would work with the funding that is
that is about to be provided. Okay. So basically we would just try to rework yes, whatever the proposal is, which is hard to do right now because we don't know yet what the what the county executive will recommend. We don't know yet what the council, how they will
respond to that recommendation or what really what we have to play with. Right? That's correct. Okay. Thank you so much, Miss Wolff. I do want to thank you for this presentation. It did answer a lot of questions. My question is on
page 22. You gave cost for preliminary costs for construction only, right. In that 145 you didn't include costs for excavating and
setting up portables. That's got to be extremely expensive because I'm very familiar with that property. Can we get a cost estimate on that? Sure we can. All right. Thank you, Miss Rivera. Evans. Thank you. That
was one of my questions. So I'm going to go to my next one. So I cannot think of any process that is more emotional than, than talking about closing schools. So I, I just want to say that that's with that being
said. My hat goes off to The Sims and community and the Sligo Creek community. But with that being said, I just want to see how the timeline would with the when we're doing the boundary studies for the
elementary school and if we do. I'm just trying to see how that would affect if we're going to have students in 2029. Let's say, for argument's sake, in the new school, but we're going
to be doing boundary changes. I just want to make sure that if we go this route, this the less disruption to our students, our staff and families. So I want to make sure that when we're doing this, we take all those
ingredients into account. Because if we're going to do the fast route, I think Doctor Taylor said, there's two, right? Doctor Taylor, page 13 and 14. I just want to see how that's going to have an effect on on
this endeavor. You guys want to talk about that? Sorry. You want to. There you go. Yes. I
mean this is this is really key, particularly not just for Sligo Creek, but even the other four elementary schools that we have proposed. It is important that we do move through this so that we are building those five to the right size in terms of projections. So while this is
the recommended, we wanted to put this out here because this probably actually could have a greater impact on some of the projects in the CIP. Okay. And then we're going to do the middle school as well. Correct.
We're doing that right now. Right now. So yeah, this would be elementary only. So so I just I just want to make sure that there's a flow to it that it does not. Yeah. The middle school is more based on what the board actually just approved us and authorized us
to do last Thursday at the board meeting is to create the additional options to take the Sims closure into consideration. That way it was. That's why it was so important for you all to give us that ability to open up those new options while we are knee deep in the middle school and high school. Okay. Thank
you, Miss Silvestre. Where to begin? Could you pull up the slide that has all the different sites that you are preliminarily exploring? Some
of them looked shovel ready and some of them looked like a big headache. So maybe not so feasible. Very good description. More trouble than it's worth. Take it off the list if it's
really not a good feasible option. So I guess I'll have to kind of look at all of these. I mean, some of them have tenants, recent tenants into these like the old Silver Spring Library now is certainly centronia.
Yeah, I will say it's better for us to put more sites up than less, because we will get the opposite question of why didn't you consider X, Y and z site? So we agree with your initial observation. Some are more shovel ready than others, but if we don't put an entire comprehensive list out there,
we'll just have to come back and redevelop another list because we will get the questions of, well, did you consider this park? Did you consider this one? So are any of these did you consider any of these sites as the holding school option rather than Sims?
We did look actually at Parkside as a potential holding school, not a middle school. It's a smaller site. It would not be able to fit a middle school, but as an elementary school it is a. The building has not been used in a number of years since Park left. It was there previously their
headquarters, and it is not large enough to fit an entire elementary school from a holding school. Also, the topography doesn't allow most of our holding schools that have our elementaries have big flat areas that we can put a number of relocatable, that actually the existing buildings don't fully accommodate either. Unfortunately, this site, it's
a one story building, doesn't allow for a lot of relocatable. So we did look at that as an opportunity. We would spend quite a bit of money to have to rebuild an entire school there, just to use it as a holding school. And but like Jessup, Blair Park, for example, is a
big site. Has that been looked at for a holding school? Not for a holding school. We were only looking at board owned or former board owned, not just open park area, but that's on your list here, right? For a site selection for the
elementary to be rebuilt, not holding school, not for holding school though. We stuck within our property for the holding school and we do so we we have also looked at other sites for for holding schools, and I believe we have some
information coming up about that. So for example, one of the sites on that list is the former Broome Middle School, which is sort of more in Rockville. There's a lot of costs associated with getting that up to more costs associated with getting that ready to be a holding school
than there would be with Sims. So I think if we were going to go that route, we probably would use an existing facility rather than build a brand new facility. This list is really more about where might we site a brand new elementary school if we're looking to say, well, where might we site a secondary
holding school? I think it would be a different list. Okay. Thank you. I have other questions. So I want to look at site and then slide seven. The slide nine is talking about the
reality of our enrollment, which is we're going to have surplus seats in. This is such a thick that it will take a while to get to slide nine okay. All right. So so but why my
comment is you said this is not going to be the first time the board will have to consider school closure. And slide seven shows that between 72 and 83, 1972 and 83, the school system
actually have to close 60 schools. So I want to staff to really look back at that time. I'm sure there's still people can remember what lessons that we can learn from that time, right? Lessons about transition,
about preserving cultures, continuity of staff, you know, all those. And working with family. I think this is a separate about Sims or Sligo Creek. This is as a system. What lessons have we learned
and how can we do better this time? My questions will be on the elementary school boundary study that you have proposed.
So tell me, what is the core objectives of the Elementary School Boundary study? And how would you define success if we do want it's very emotional issue, right. So we'll start
with defining success. And I'll I'll let my colleagues also fill in some of the blanks here. I think that we need to get to a state of a better utilization of our facilities than what we currently have right now. Right now we have some buildings that are over utilized and many
buildings that are underutilized. So getting to a point where we have some sustainable utilization on a ten year time horizon would make a lot of sense. And I think that that's a good definition of of success. As you may recall, even looking at
some of our middle school boundaries, which are largely predicated on elementary school boundary combinations, we have some cleanup to do. A lot has changed since the last time that elementary boundaries were
assessed. And so you have islands, and in many cases, one of the biggest pieces of feedback that we heard from families was that many families drive past a number of schools to get to their school, and that that's a pain point for them in terms of their
convenience and their ability to have a school that is more closely connected to their neighborhood. This is an opportunity to to correct that. And so I think that there are a couple of things that put us in a position for long term
building utilization. And I think that that will generate some, some things for us to look at in terms of some potential consolidation points as well. One of the lessons that I know that we can take away from the 1950s, 60s and
70s is that when we were experiencing a time of rapid growth, we chose to make some very small schools on some very small footprints in some very niche communities. And we kind
of created this mess ourselves, not thinking about how we could really create a school portfolio that that actually accommodated some changes in some awakens in enrollment. So not to say that that small
schools will, will get extra attention in terms of consolidation, because that's not necessarily the case either. But we do need to look at at every school in the portfolio, what this looks like in terms of long term, we do need to
look at their facility condition and if they have met the useful life of their building, does it make sense for that building to continue? Those are things that we need to keep in consideration as we do another round of boundary
adjustments and study. Thank you. I'm checking my second round question. Mr. I'd like to talk about the area where this school is, and it's the density
and the projections for population there. Yes, I do see a slight downtick, you know, that you showed us. It's not drastic. The Purple Line will be finishing up. There are
plans, different sector plans, looking to take advantage of that purple line being completed and look at more dense housing in that area. Right now. We're in a weird place in this nation and in the
economy, so we don't know exactly how all of that will play out. But my question is, if this school becomes a holding school and we do see population starting to pop
there, which is a very real possibility, how would this school forever be a holding school? Or could we use that property in a way to relieve capacity, let another area take the turn of being a holding
school, because we might need that property, and it might be, you know, after these couple of projects come in as a holding school, we might say, hey, the population is going up. We need property. Absolutely. I think it gives us that flexibility. You're not making a decision to
make it a holding school for indefinite, and we can never reopen it. And in ten years, five years, 12 years, we might see something different and we might need to reconsider. I think that's really important
to be clear about that. We are not making decisions for future boards about how to use that property. We are talking about this CIP. If we go this route, I think a perfect example would be Northwood High School when it closed and was used as a holding school when Woodward
was closed and Tilden moved over to Woodward and then Tilden on Tilden Lane was used. I know that's a lot was used as a holding school, and I believe that was our last middle school holding school. So and now they have a brand new building back
on Tilden Lane. So I think that sort of should be the perspective that we're looking through that it can we can reinvest back into that school. I would like to also have I'm hoping that the planning department could also present
to us about just the overall outlook for the area. The other issue I wanted to touch on quickly is a message I'm getting. A lot is supporting
teachers, and I know we talked about the transition plan on page 27, but it doesn't really talk about teacher retention in the meantime. So not just about transitioning, but how do we
support teachers today. And I know you talked about keeping programing, and I just kind of would like to see that plan laid out a little more fleshed out. So absolutely, Miss Stewart, that's an important point. And and planning for the
future transition is one thing. But as you said, we want the school to continue to be vibrant between now and then as well. And so that is actually a conversation that we've had at the executive leadership level, because I think really that's going to be go, go extend beyond our facilities. Friends
here really working with the school leadership department, but also the academic department, the services department to really see like how can we again incentivize teachers to stay? How can we, you know, have have ways that
again, encourage that community to stay and assure them that there will be a smooth transition on the other side, because that's a big part of it. So I don't know that we have all of that right now. And a lot of that will depend, obviously, on some of the future decisions about how those transitions are rolling
out. But just know that, again, it's it's on our mind as well. And we agree that those are really important conversations that we're having at the leadership level. I believe that part of the concerns as teachers that teach certain electives, because it's the block scheduled school, so
there's more electives. And I wanted to confirm is if eastern is also middle school, a block scheduling school, and how we would handle that. We don't necessarily have to answer that today, but please use that another time. Miss Montoya. Thank you. I just would join in
miss Stewart's concern about making sure that staff have a really clear understanding, because it can all feel very uncomfortable when it's just this kind of abyss of unknown. Right. And I think that we definitely don't want our students to kind of, for lack
of a better word, be shortchanged in the meantime, because now there's this revolving door of staff who, perhaps understandably or not, however anyone feels might be looking for positions elsewhere because they're concerned about the volatility or moving or whatnot. But I want one
question. I get a lot, and I think it's a reasonable question to ask. How is it that we can use this school, even with some minor improvements or modifications, as a holding school, but then not as the middle school for the students?
Right. It doesn't make sense to a lot of us as to why it's okay for students to be in there for this period of time, but right. If the building, the building's either safe or it's not. Yeah, I think we phrase it a few different ways, but it's really
that temporary. You can you can deal with not the best of facilities for a short period of time. Right. And that holding facility, you're there 1 to 2 years. It's not perfect, but you can manage it right. Being a permanent school, knowing it's never going to go away. It's a very different
feeling when it comes to facility conditions. Right? But for our middle schoolers, they're only there for a short time. Right? This is not K through five. This is six through eight. So for the students who are in there, their experience is always a short period of time. Right? I
hear what you're saying. And at the elementary school level, like I can see how that would make sense. But when you're having sixth, seventh and eighth, their experience is the same. Whether it's a holding school or not, a holding school. And so that kind of becomes to the community can feel like semantics, right? But it's not
just the students that are there three years, it's the staff that have been there a long time that don't leave after the student cycles out after the three years. So keeping that, just like we've been talking about the importance of keeping the staff in mind, they don't. And we like that. They don't go away, but they continue to have to
deal with the facility condition year over year. So another feature is to some of the pieces that we would want to be able to include in a permanent in a permanent school. So, for example, one of the projects that we really weren't able to complete as part of this was the addition of a
suite for linkages to learning, for example. Some of it, it's about where you can situate things that again, for, for a for a permanent school to to have the operational outline that it would like to have is not able to be configured in here. But again, while
certainly we appreciate that some students may have their experience, their kids will cycle through, families will cycle through. And so it is a different feeling than can we construct this permanent school in a way that meets all of the expectations we would have for a permanent school. Okay. I just want us to appreciate how
to the community. It can feel like, well, it's okay for these particular cohorts of kids who are dealing with it now without all of the things. But then somehow, magically, it's not at this year just to the community. This is how it can feel, right?
So I just want to make sure that we understand their frustration. Thank you, miss McGuire. I'm happy to hear that you are the executives are aware M.C.P.S. are aware the importance of minimizing disruption during transition
time and the need to support in terms of our continuity of staff and teaching and learning and preserving the school culture. I think we have to handle that. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Miss Yang. And I and
I don't want to steal anything from miss McGuire here, but this is a very long runway. This is multiple years into the future. A lot of things have to transpire before this would even become a reality. And it
is really that full thought process of having a long runway that does make a big difference. We think in having a smooth transition in this regard, things that we can make a decision and move very quickly
on things like programing, we can move pretty quickly on. But in terms of a facility plan where it takes multiple years for construction and depending on the board's proclivity to do grandfathering versus all at once, it really does take
multiple years for us to think through what that might look like. And so this is about as close to a decision point as we could get, feeling as though we would have the comfort of having that transition. And so we're sensitive to that. So
thank you for recognizing that. And Miss Wolff and Miss Rivera will move on to the next. So Miss Wolff and Miss Rivera, all of us. My question really comes from looking at some of the emails that I've received, and it concerns equity. Many of the families feel like it's black
and brown children that are being affected and that we don't care. In closing a school and relocating another school from their area, how do you respond to that? Well, I'll take that one. It's certainly
not targeted to to any one community or any one group of people. And as you could have seen on the if you want to go to the enrollment projections and showing some of the decline, some of this is mathematics and looking at where we have population growth and where we
have population decline. And of the 2600 seats that are 2500 seats that we're looking at decline in the middle school level, 600 of them are going to be in this targeted area that are going to be impacted, and
almost half of them are in the Sims community directly. That I mean, the this is absolutely objectively what we are looking at. We are also taking a look at the facility condition of the Sims building itself and
knowing where it is in terms of proximity to getting any kind of meaningful renovation could be as long as 20 years from now. And as a result of that, we don't think that that building can last 20 years. So so we do
feel like the students in that community do deserve a learning environment that does support them. It just may not be in that school. Now, I absolutely agree. I just wanted you to respond on behalf of the constituents that have been writing in. But also I wanted
to say that, you know, we think that we are helping by providing the same kind of resources that we feel are in other parts of the county. And, yeah, historic investment in Silver Spring. And it needs it not just for the middle school
level where Eastern and and Sligo definitely get get upgrades to their facility, which will impact positively on students and families that are currently tracked for Sims, but also in feeder elementary schools that that, like a lot
of our facilities, have been long overlooked and drastically need attention. And that includes Sligo Creek too. Sligo Creek getting a new facility is called for and that definitely fits into this space as well. But I know Miss Whiteoak you want to add something, you hit
it at the end. I just wanted to emphasize that the recommendation didn't come with just closing a facility, that we were very mindful of the improvements that would be made at the schools that those students would go to, taking into account Eastern and Sligo Middle, that they go to new facilities. When this transition happens. Thank you.
Thank you, Miss Rivera. Evans, thank you for saying that. I think it's one of the oldest schools I visited. Simms, and I'm glad that they're actually going to do. You're going to do the bathroom renovations. Is that this year with FY 26
funding? Yes. Okay. My my question is since we're looking at to hold it as, as a holding facility, and in page 24 and 25, you listed som those schools that could possibly be used that we can use this
facility as a holding facility. Is that correct that they're in that in that area? I'm just curious to see, because I know you said that they were ranked number 43. Right? So then some of the schools that were
looking to do it as as a holding facility, I would like to see where they are ranked, if that's possible. And and and also to see if, if we're, you
know, if a doctor Taylor saying that we're going down this, this road of other districts also facing the same thing of looking at having a realistic look, whether we're going to have under enrollment right in the next ten years, I guess I
would hope that we're also looking at those schools to see if we're going to have serious under enrollment in those schools as well. Yeah, because that I think would this is what I don't want to happen. Right.
I don't want us tend to come back to the Sims community and be like, well, you know, we really did need you to need it as a holding school. I just would really like us to if we're going to go down this road, let's go down this road
with open eyes and make sure that we have all the information surrounding that school, that this is really going to be utilized for that. And, and I do have to say, as being part of the Brown community who have gone to a school that needed renovation
for decades. I graduated from high school. I went to Washington Grove. Cases were middle, and those schools were left for decades untouched. That what made ours, what made my experience as a student was
the community, my teachers and my classmates. And yes, we were jealous that other ones had better things than we did. But that's what made you know, that's what made, you know, growing up in the city so special. So I know this is a huge undertaking, but I just
want to make sure that we are making looking at down the road and saying, if we're going to do this, let's do it. Let's look at the other schools. Are they going to be in the role? Are we going to utilize this building? And it will be also useful to have a kind of timeline for that. Okay. Last
question, Miss Silvestri. I echo the the need to do localized community engagement with each school community because they know the ins and outs of how this is going to impact every aspect of their lives. I've been working here
to figure out for. Sligo Creek. Okay, first it will be the county wide boundaries, then will be the new school construction. Then there will be the boundary, the elementary boundary study. So kind of a
series of stages of how they be impacted. And that's just me from, you know, on my notebook. They will understand it and know it better. So I look forward to hearing about when that can be scheduled. And then my question is about the size of the middle schools once,
if this plan is implemented. I've gotten concerns about we're we're building big middle schools. As a result, Eastern and Sligo will be much bigger. So can you speak to I think that's they will both be at
above our recommended numbers. Can you speak to that please? Sure. I don't I don't have a good understanding of how the recommended numbers came to be, because certainly there are middle schools that are much larger than our recommended
numbers that are some of the best in the country. And certainly in larger districts like ours. We run them pretty small and pretty inefficiently. The byproduct of having slightly larger middle schools does have the advantage of of
elective opportunities and expanding course offerings, because you have some economies of scale that you can capture. That being said, I think, you know, you start pressing past 1600 students. It's too big for
a middle school environment, depending on the size of the campus and the footprint that you have, less than a thousand students, you start limiting some of the elective opportunities that you have. And many of our middle schools are under 1000 students. So
there are pros and cons to both. Looking at our enrollment data, I don't think that we're going to be pushing 1500 in and in any of our scenarios just based on where we see projections going anyway. So the fear of us
creating mega or large middle schools, I don't think is real based on what we are looking at in terms of enrollment projections. Could that change? Possibly so in the future? I mean, our enrollment projections are are very
reliable. Within five or so years. They tend to diminish in reliability after that. And they're incredibly reliable within two years. So where we're pointing at this particular moment seems to suggest that our middle schools will be in line with what with
what we currently do. But on the bigger side. Thank you. Please continue to the Crown High School presentation. Good
afternoon. So. If you could go back up there you go. Overzealous clicking. So close. Yeah. So staying with our conversations about enrollment.
So for for Crown High School, I would like to take us back to when we started planning for this project. So obviously every high school requires several years of planning, working with the state and getting the budgets in place. And, you know, we usually base
our educational specifications based on the projections at the time when the project is being planned. So in 2021, which was we were preparing for FY 23 CIP, the projections at that point showed the high schools that
are surrounding and in the Crown High School Boundary Study area by 2027 would have a need for about 1838 additional seats. And that was the basis
of planning for Crown. And this is what was submitted to the state. And, you know, and which included obviously some additional seats at the Poolesville High School, but it did not include any seats at the Damascus High School at that point. And we were in the
need for 838 students. And we planned to build Crown for about 2250 seats. This was for 2021. If you fast forward one slide. So this is our reality today as we're looking at our 2027 enrollment. When Crown is
going to complete its construction, our current enrollment projection shows that at the time when Crown opens, we're going to have an enrollment of 957 students in
all those high schools. And by 20, 30, 32, that number would actually increase even more. We will have a capacity of close to 1700 seats in the area. And this is not including crowns. If we include the seats that are available in Crown, as well
as the 700 plus seats that we're planning to put in in the Damascus High School project, we're going to have a close to 3900 seats available in that area that we're going to not be in need of, which is the the reason for us, you know, Doctor
Taylor making a recommendation to consider for the board to use Crown as a holding school for the time being. Again, you can see the difference of 1838. That was going to be, you know, was going to be needed when we
started planning in 2021 and in, you know, 2027, we're going to be under capacity by 957 and about 1700 by 3132. And these does not include the crown seats or the Damascus seats. If you could go to the next slide.
So we wanted to talk a little bit more about the timeline and potential savings that we have. You know, come up with some analysis on by utilizing Crown as a holding school. The the first option that you see on
the left hand side of the the chart includes Damascus being replaced, whether it's on site. Or we could also use Crown as a holding school for Damascus. The the cost estimate for these options for Damascus didn't
change because it will still be a replacement. However, utilizing Crown as a holding school for Damascus does give us an opportunity to find the right location for Damascus on that site, because currently, if we do replace while the students are at the site
Damascus, we might have to build it on where the the football field is currently. But you know, allowing us to use Crown as a holding school for Damascus allows the design team to find the appropriate location for the school and gives us a better, better Damascus for the long term,
possibly in that regard. So in the first. Scenario, we looked at replacing Damascus, which would complete in 2030, 2031, sorry, August of 2031. And then
Magruder and Wootton, looking at them for occupied. Occupied renovation. So the timeline for that option gets extended for Magruder with a completion projected completion date of
August of 2038, and for Wootton, a projected completion date of August of 2042. And we'll go over the timeline in a over the next slide. The reason it takes longer for us to do occupied renovations is because, you know, if we're not replacing
and the students stay in the building, we would have to continue to move the students into different sections of the building while we're renovating, which extends the timeline. We also looked at the second option, replacing on site all three schools without a holding
school. Damascus still stays on its timeline, and the anticipated cost for that option is $306 million. Same as the option one. And then for Magruder, the completion date moves up a year. Because if we're replacing on site it
takes three years versus renovating a phase occupied renovation over four years. And that cost estimate is $367 million. And then wooden replacing on site would, you know, anticipated to be completed in August of 2040 for
a estimated cost of $383 million? If we were able to use Crown as a holding school in option number three, the cost of Damascus replacement remains the same. However, renovating
Magruder can be done at a much faster pace and completed in August of 2033. Estimated cost at $260 million. And then the renovation of wooden or renewal of wooden can be completed by August of 2035, with an
estimated cost of roughly $300 million. If you can see the difference between the first option with, you know, staying within our current plan, the way we renovate our buildings, versus if we were able to use Crown as a holding school,
would potentially save us seven years of construction time and roughly $273 million in savings because of, you know, our ability to use Crown as a holding school. If you could go to the next slide. So this is the timeline that I was discussing. The current CIP
shows the in the first scenario for Damascus, if we are not using a holding school, Damascus will stay on site. Two years of planning and three years of construction. And then the planning for and design for Magruder would start in FY 33,
and then it would require four years of construction period because it would be phased, occupied renovation at Magruder. And then for wooden, it would, you know, the plannwould start in 2037, and then four years of construction would take us out to 2042 before all
three schools are completed for the second option. Again, you know, just replacing all three schools on site, it allows us to complete the construction in three years. So Damascus would still complete in 2031. The
design and planning for Magruder would start in FY 33 with three years of construction. It would complete in 2037, and then Wooten would complete in 2040. So we're going to be potentially saving two years of time. However, the
cost is not going to be as much different. And for option three, using Crown as a holding school really allows us to move the construction timeline back. We can complete the Damascus construction in 2031 and and
then, you know, the the Damascus students would go back to their campus and then we can immediately move the Magruder students into Crown as a holding school. And because we're not having the students in the building, we're able to renovate those buildings in two
years and be able to move the students in to Magruder in 2033. And same thing for wooden. It would significantly cut down the construction timeline, and we would start the wooden construction in 2034 and completed in 2035. If you know we are able to use Crown as a
holding school, if you could go to the next slide. We wanted to also visually demonstrate a map that shows how many of our high schools are within 20 minutes drive of the Crown High School. You can see that in the map. Majority of our high schools do
fall within that 20 minute time frame, making it a great location for a holding school because the transportation time is going to be much less. And if you go to go to the next slide, we do also have have the
map here showing all the middle schools that are within 20 minute drive of Crown School High School, which could make it a a candidate for future middle school renovation. If we continue to consider Crown as a holding school. Now, the other thing we also have talked about,
and this conversation came up a lot today. What if the enrollment projection changes and as Doctor Taylor and Miss mentioned, that, you know, using Crown as a holding school for the time being doesn't eliminate our option to make it a comprehensive high school in the near future. So as
projections change and we're continuously monitoring that, we can obviously have that conversation at a near future about, you know, turning Crown back into a comprehensive high school. So that's I think is the end. Okay. So would be open
for questions. Or do we want to go to the next section the next session. Let's start our cover I believe this one warrant it's own conversation I'm going to start from my left hand side to see if there are any lights on with questions. Miss
Rivera-Oven. Yes. So can you. First of all, thank you for that. That's a lot of money. 200 and almost 75 million. Correct. We could we could
build another school with that money. So why doesn't the construction take three years as a holding school for Damascus versus for Magruder Wootton. So the assumptions that we made for these
scenarios is that Magruder wouldn't are good candidates for renewals. And then that would shorten the the time frame for the construction versus having to build a brand new school. Like what we're anticipating for Damascus. Actually, if we could go to the
slide that shows the different timelines. Thank you. Yeah. So in the first scenario that you see up top, because of it is with the students on campus, their entire high school experience at Magruder and
Wootton, their school would be under construction under that scenario, because they would be on campus. And effectively, what what this would mean is that a portion of the building would be shut off. Correct. And they would we would utilize portable classrooms and they
would renovate that portion. And then when that section opens, they would close another section of the building and renovate that and effectively have, you know, five sections of the building and one of those sections be a portable
set of portable classrooms that gets used and they rotate through the building. It takes a very long period of time. The advantage of having the the holding school means that you can accelerate that work because the kids aren't going to be there and the staff
aren't going to be there, and it just dramatically speeds all of that up. The difference in the Damascus project as a replacement. It does take just a little bit more than than two and three quarters years to construct a high school, no
matter what, whether it's a renewal or whether it's a replacement, you're looking at two years of planning anywhere from 18 to 24 months of of planning before the shovels hit the ground. But the work is very different in a renewal
than a replacement. And so to add some clarity to what a renewal is for, for those who are paying attention and watching a renewal is effectively taking the building down to the studs. We are not really reconstructing the exterior of the building. We may be doing some masonry work.
There may be an addition, there may be a bump out. There may be some changes that we do, maybe adding some windows or making some things. But we're not laying a foundation. We're not we're not letting a foundation cure over time, which takes a tremendous amount of time for construction. We're not
erecting the skeletal infrastructure of the building, which also takes a tremendous amount of time and steel. But we are reconfiguring the building from the inside out. And and it would not look how the building looks today as, as
you are conceiving it, walking in, but really gutted from from all versions of that we we may even depending on the extent how extensive the renewal gets, may even move, how floors are configured in some cases. So it
can be very extensive. And that can be done in anywhere from 12 to 24 months. So not having the kids in there definitely accelerates the timeline tremendously. And you you save the cost of a high school. Okay.
Thank you, Miss Malone, please. Thank you for this presentation. I didn't get to say it earlier, but I'm also curious and I'm not sure if it was mentioned. If Crown is used as a holding school, will the programs that are currently or may be offered at Magruder or at Wootton be
still available to the students that end up at Crown? Yeah, that's easy. So effectively the school picks up and moves temporarily and then moves back. So yes, programing moves along with it. Magruder is a great
example in Wootton is a great example to where a lot of their programing is shell space. So there may be some temporary adjustments for programing that is not currently configured for
for the swing space or the holding school. And I'll use an example that actually goes to Damascus. Damascus has a pretty extensive auto garage, and we would have to come up with an alternate plan on how we could provide that, that continuity of classes. And it may not
necessarily be on site, it may be in a professional space, or it may be at Seneca Valley, or it may be at at another location. But the the idea is that you provide the same continuity of services. A good example from Magruder might be
they have the aviation program and they have the large simulators. Fortunately, those large simulators stay in the classroom, can be moved and can stay in a classroom and and be can reconfigure to that space and then move back later on. And the proposed programs that
may be added to Crown will also still be available to. Correct. Okay. Miss Silvestre. Yes. So this slide deck is a lot
smaller than our previous discussions. And so I'm going to ask the question that was proposed by my colleague who's not here today about the hybrid option for Crown. Can you talk about that. Have you are you
not ready to present on what that might look like today? Is that why that's not being presented? And my question was about what if we are not fully funded? How does that impact the utilization of Crown as a
holding school? Yeah. So I think the we know that the the request to, you know, look at an option to use Crown as a hybrid model where, you know, some of the local students
would still attend Crown while the, you know, remainder part of the building being used as a holding school. So that is something we have started working with our, our consultants. And then, you know, obviously that is going to be one of the options based on the resolution that was passed by the board. That would be one of
the options that is going to be looked at as the as the, you know, potential options that comes out of that exercise. So we would have we would show that what it could look like with that boundary option. Yeah. So yeah, that is something that, you know, we're working with
our consultants on for the boundary study. Okay. And then my question about the funding is I just I fear that if we go this route, we're going to be pressured to build schools when we also have pressures in our
budget to maintain our HVAC, maintain our roofs, maintain a lot of systems. And so that's why I'm asking the question. I feel like if we go with the Crown as a holding school, we better use it with kids from,
you know, all over the system, building new schools. But that's going to deplete our budget for things that we need for countywide projects. So I really want to see how that might play out because that's a concern that I have. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead. Yeah. I'd just add one
quick note about that. Yes. And we we actually have to walk and chew gum at the same time. We have to build schools and fix our existing portfolio and fix the HVAC and fix the roofs. And
I hope that this is an inflection point for our community, where we think about the assets that we've invested in 30, 20, 50, 90 years ago and ask ourselves the really hard questions about how do we want
to maintain these facilities moving forward. We have them now. And so part of that is if we want to keep a magruder and we want to keep a wootten, we need to invest in in those facilities in a really meaningful way. And we also
need to look at the long laundry list of HVAC and roofs if we're going to keep those buildings online. So it does force an uncomfortable conversation where we have to have serious dialog with our funding partners about what is
the right size of supporting our capital improvement needs in the school system. And we need to be realistic on the school side, too, and say, how do we get there over time, knowing that we can't get there overnight? And so I think
you're asking probably the critical question, Miss Silvestre, which is how do we craft a long term plan to get us to a place where we can reach that equilibrium, where we are fixing things that are broken? We're planning ahead
for the replacement of assets when they have outlived their useful life. And how do we keep up with this, whether we're in a state of growth or whether we're in a state of decline that is both responsible to the taxpayers and also meets the
school's needs and provides a learning environment that we can be proud of. And that lifts kids up for higher student achievement. Okay, Miss Montoya, thank you. I think Miss Rivera-Oven, she had a turn, so I'll come back to her. Thank
you. So I know we talked about in the context of Sligo Creek and Sims. If the county doesn't fund and this kind of little dance that we have to do, but here, whether they fund this or not, then has this ripple effect not only on whether we
rebuild, renovate, replace, whatever is applicable to that particular school, these other schools, as well as then the local community of the potential holding school as Crown. Right. And so I get concerned because nothing is
actually going to start being built because of the way the process rolls out, not because of M.C.P.S. right, but because we have to plan and it takes a while to get permits and all those things until earliest of fiscal year 2029, when, with all due respect to all of us,
none of us might even be on this board at that time, right? Just because of the natural way of things. And so the county choosing to fund or not or potential future board's choosing to stick with this plan or not becomes really, really important. Keeping that
in mind, it also looks like under all scenarios, for at least two years, Crown will just sit empty. Is that the plan? One year? Well, it says fiscal year 27 and 28. Fiscal year 27 is next school year,
and Crown wouldn't be scheduled to open until fiscal 20. So we're just looking at so one, I want to make that clear because it is a little confusing. Not everyone operates in fiscal years. Most of us we don't look at those kinds of things. Right. So when we see 27 we're thinking that year. So let's
just make sure that the community understands so that we so they understand what we're looking at. And so even then, what is there a plan to use that for something. Or maybe we don't need to use it for something. Yeah. There's actually a ton of preliminary work that can happen during that time period. If the board
chooses to exercise that as an option. And that's a big if. I mean, we're this this is a lot of moving parts. You have a couple of things that would likely need to occur. You could start the process of moving a lot of assets for the temporary
use in fiscal 28. Sorry, potentially like the automotive. Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. But also even some of the the soft cost kind of components of just even equipment and and other aspects of that that that could
be utilized. Then you could also even move to that facility even sooner and just absolutely choose to exercise the holding facility sooner, even if construction wasn't underway and just utilize it as that
facility. And maybe we'll get lucky in the process will go faster and we'll be able to build sooner, right? Yeah. Fingers crossed. Unlikely. We can all hope to under-promise and overdeliver on that space. But, but, but there's also the
need to that that we we from an infrastructure standpoint definitely have need of space. And space doesn't go unused unless it really is serving some other strategic purpose.
So for us, having even meeting space available to us as a school system, even if for just a few months, is transformative for us in terms of what we're able to do presently. Right now, the leaders of the school system can't even be all in one
place at one time just because there isn't a facility that can house that unless school is out of session. So so we can find ways to use the space. Maybe we just start the kids there from the beginning or whatever, but either way we can find something. But then what
happens? Yeah. If we. So let's let's just say that that works great and Damascus moves in. We're able to get them rebuilt. And then because we all know that the name of this game is unanticipated events that happen. And all the talk of the fiscal uncertainty, what
happens then if either there is no funding to then do these second and third pieces of Magruder and Wooten and or possibly maybe enrollment changes, projections change in that area. What hns to Magruder and Wooten. So this is
the the really challenging piece of this component because this is about expanding options really more than anything else, you're kind of locked into the first two scenarios. If you don't have a holding school.
And given the the scope and magnitude of those projects, really a holding school amplifies your ability to do things on time, under budget, within a cost perspective that people can deal with. Our
taxpayers can can deal with. And so without that option, you really whether whether it's Crown or another holding school, a holding school is is just a huge advantage. And we're really kind of hampered by not having holding schools. So you're forced into likely the
the top or the middle scenario without that. Okay. So we'd have to just like Sims and Sligo kind of come back, rework it. But as a practical matter, what we would be looking at because we don't have a secondary holding school is either option one or option two.
Yes. Okay. Thank you so much, Miss Stewart. A couple things I was looking at the 2021 projections and in 2025 projections on page 44. I just
want to point out that for our 2526 numbers, compared to what the projections were in 2021, it looks like we're off by almost 2000 students. Yeah. And
if you look at the projections for 2728, which is highlight highlighted, we are 2883 students. We have that. That's a huge difference. I mean this just also goes to show you that
projections are only based on the best information we have today. These projections can change wildly. So this is why we need to really remain flexible and also look at, you
know, what happened actually. Do we think what happened to drive this projection to be so different in such a few. Yes. Covid. Yeah I understand you have three compounding events and I can answer this very
quickly for you. Number one is the pandemic and the return to to learning after the pandemic. We did have a bounce back year, but our bounce back year did not return us to our peak, which was 165,000 plus students.
We did not bounce back to that many school districts did. We were not one of the ones that did. People made other choices and moved to other areas. We also have observed a decline in live births that has also
played a role, as well as the housing market in Montgomery County, and housing affordability has absolutely played a role. And the last and most significant that we've seen this past year, which we expect to have a dramatic impact in the near future, is
our international enrollments have declined sharply, and that international enrollment decline has been something that we have reliably counted on for enrollment growth over the last decade. And plus, and has
enriched our community and really immeasurable ways. And seeing that decline is hurtful in not just our our enrollment numbers and, and students and seats, but in a lot of other really enriching ways. So these
are these things that happened to us as a community, as a nation, was not predictable. When these predictions were made. So it just goes to show that we need to continually
relook at where we are and not be just stuck into one way of looking at our facilities. My last question and this is pretty easy to answer, I believe, when looking at if we use this as a holding facility and looking at the budget,
because right now we're not planned for the next project that would be in the budget, which would be Magruder. Would that will we have some kind of line item added to fiscal year,
especially 32? Because I do see we have less programed in that year. How will this affect our total budget? So here's the super fun part about the CIP is that in two years, you get to do it all over again and come back and take a look at that as
an option. You could certainly add that as an amendment to this CIP, and something that the board directs us to do as a result of this work session or a future work session. But the most meaningful parts in the six year CIP really are the first two fiscal years, because
we do have a biennial look at the CIP and and you'll be right back at this again in 2027. Looking at the fiscal 29 through 34 CIP. And and you
would be looking at the feasibility of Magruder and Wooten as projects, along with other projects at that time. So you're not missing an opportunity is what I'm trying to say. So even if it's not included in a CIP per se right now, although you could you
could just know that you're not missing an opportunity to add it at a later date and still be within the time frame or the window that we're presenting here. I do believe if we are asking communities to make a sacrifice and we're asking a
lot of sacrifice, along with a lot of improvements, I think if we have this chart out and it says FY 32, we should at least consider putting some kind of placeholder in the budget.
Thank you. Thank you, Miss Rivera. Yes. No thanks for those questions, because I was also wondering what was going to happen in that gap year with Crown. I trying to understand, at least for Damascus, if
Damascus stays on site, there's really no difference than right. Because it's still going to take three years. Yeah. And as Miss Stewart said, there's there is a lot we're asking the community to sacrifice a lot.
So I'm trying to understand what is the advantage of them being. Crown in crown. And then I'm also having a little heart palpitations from the Crown community because they've been waiting for this project as
well to be completed. So there is there's there's that aspect, the uncertainty of things. We don't know what's coming down the pike. So we don't know if you know how badly on enrollment Magruder are going to be in the next few years.
There's a lot of unknowns, but I'm just trying to understand also the overcrowding that we're seeing in the other schools that were part of the boundary study that Crown was going to relieve, right, like Gaithersburg High School and others. How does that also play
into this? But let's start with my first one. First about what is the advantage. So the advantage for Damascus is we are allowed gives us the opportunity to think of the whole site as a clean slate. If they stay in the existing building, then the new build needs to go on the field somewhere. Okay, right. That's
the only option for it. If we move them off site, we can reimagine and really put the building where maybe it's there, but maybe it's where the current facility is, right? And maybe we want to demolish that and keep it on that corner of the property by having them off site. It's a clean slate. Fresh
start allows us to really plan. Okay. So I just want to I just want to be clear for for my Damascus constituents, if they stay on site, we're looking at three years and that's renewing everything the buildings, the
fields. It would be a new facility. It would be a new facility. It would be a replacement, a new build somewhere on the field. Okay. Is there a possibility that it might take longer than three years? That's okay. Possible.
Always likely? No. Okay. That makes me feel better. So if we have that gap year and I have not really discussed this with my Damascus cluster folks, but if we have that gap year. So when, when do we start doing construction? Damascus. Like
when will we put the first shovel? 2929 right. No, 2028 2028 is the okay 20 year? Yes, 2028. Would it make sense for those ninth graders to start a
crown then, and then have their whole experience in one building versus starting in 10th grade? I think it's something we have to explore, I
don't think I think a talk with the community would be a good idea. I think we need to have and just an explanation of of why this is beneficial to the Damascus cluster to, to take this option. Yeah. No, I understand, but Damascus is the
DNA of Damascus is, you know, your Damascus person. You're there. That's your community. I mean, remember the whole the whole thing with with the with the. With the program, with the automotive program. I mean, it's it's they, they hold true
to their, to to their roots. So I just think it's rtant that we have that conversation with, with the community and, and just make sure that we're clear why this is a benefit. Because when you look at it, you're like, well, it's still going to take that amount of
tiSo why is my kid going to be on a bus, you know, 20 minutes or longer sometimes. So I just if I could add so one of the benefits of, you know, being able to move Damascus to, to crown is even if we replaced
on site, the construction will continue after the new high school is built. So if we're replacing on site, the students remain on site for, you know, for in their existing building. For three years we open the new building. After three years we move the students. But the site
is still under construction for another extended period of time just to take the demolition out. And depending on that was not clear. Yeah. So if we if we do have to, you know, if we're building on the field, which means we have to rebuild the, the field once the existing building is taken down. So
there are advantages to being able to move them where they would after three years when they athletic facility. Correct. So when they do show up and that's part of their DNA in Damascus athletic facilities. Yeah. So when after three years when they move back from Crown,
they're literally walking into a brand new account. Okay. All right. Thank you for that clarification. All right. So we you got a second then, Miss Stewart I'll do the last question. And then going forward, I want us to do the last several sessions together
until we get the follow up question session. Thank you. Sorry. I have kind of a quick question. I believe it's a quick question. So I've also gotten emails that says, you
know, if we don't concerned that the Sligo, I mean, the Silver Spring International and Sligo Creek Elementary School site would be a holding school
for schools like Magruder, like Damascus. I mean, I know I just want to put that out there, that if we don't have Crown as a holding school, then all of a
sudden this Silver Spring site is the a secondary holding school. So I am getting questions asking if kids will be bussed all the way across the county. Unlikely. Wow. Not
from Damascus. Okay. Thank you, Miss Montoya, I have a question about costs. So under all three scenarios, it looks like the cost for Damascus is the same. And that's a little confusing
because if we have an off site like a holding school, then it would seem like we need to bust potentially more kids, maybe that need to take the bus activities, Athletics. I don't know if we sometimes bus over families because we have a community event or whatnot. And
so if you could just maybe you need to do a breakdown later, that's fine too. And then related kind of to the costs in the CIP proposal. Are we going to move some things around then because Wooton and Magruder
weren't in this spreadsheet, but now we're bringing them in. Can you just help me understand better what needs to move if this is what gets voted on? Right? Are there other projects that are going to have to come out because we need the money or whatnot? And then also, just
why does Damascus cost the same no matter what? Because the other schools don't. So for Damascus this is only construction costs. What you were just describing are operational costs. So the additional bussing that would all come out of our operating bus, our operating budget. So that's why you don't see any of
those pieces in here. And their budget stays the same. Because in all three scenarios we are proposing a replacement school. What changes in the Magruder and Wootton is that in the first two scenarios, the first scenario, it's a renewal but on site. So we have to cycle the students in and out over the
four years. So that adds dollars to the construction budget. In the second one, it's a replacement, but it's shortened to three years, and in the third one it's a two year renewal. So it also changes based on where you are in the fiscal year, because you add out escalation costs. And does that include like
inflation? Right. Every year the costs go up. We always know now would cost this much or whatever. So so there's there's some buffers in there for that. Right. It's not going to be down to the penny of course because we don't know what that will be. Right. And so is Damascus the only one I mean.
So then Magruder and Wootton would have those additional operating costs as well. Right. If we were going to use holding, is it possible? Not today, but to get like a ballpark for what that would look like. So the community has an idea of how much total it costs to do these things. Just in general. We could probably get a comparison of Northwood
at Woodward right now. That's true as a comparison point. Okay. And then again, the second question was to is anything going to have to move in terms of the proposed CIP? Because again, Magruder and Wootton were not on this
initial list. Right. That is a pain point. The board has to decide later on because right now they're not in the seven. Right. So okay. But I guess then let me let me rephrase the question in terms of what would something has to move, right.
Not necessarily. It it really is. You could add or you could move something if you wanted to, but not necessarily. It's really in the plan that the board approves the. All right. So we're going to move on to
the next session. But I want to just share a fact. I think Churchill High School, that community remember living through a renewal on site. And
so I believe if you talk to that community, they can share with you the health and safety issues encountered during those years. So it is a very challenging scenario for doing renewal on site. Thank you.
Let's move on to the next section. Unfortunately, we have a long history of renewal pains in Montgomery County that were not really that enjoyable and definitely a re-emphasis of of
us spending that time wisely. If you'll advance the next slide, I'm going to begin this section and close this section and revisit some of our infrastructure needs as a critical component to us successfully operating as a
school system. Right now, we are literally operating out of a half dozen facilities for our central administration. And I know that it seems like low hanging fruit any time that the
community wants to pick at M.C.P.S. as a corporate entity. But it does take a large infrastructure to operate a large infrastructure. And with
that, 238 buildings and 30,000 staff members do need access to instructional resources and supplies. They do need a human resources department. They do need a finance department. All of these things are requirements that we have to
fulfill. And us having adequate infrastructure does make a big difference. Now, granted, this is not the old Blair High School, and it wasn't built in the 1930s, but it's pretty close. The Carver Educational Services Center, which is the historic headquarters of the
school system for the last several decades, has seen better days. And this is not something we talked about with Sims, but is noteworthy for us to revisit in that with our older buildings, the cost of
renovating and fixing and replacing in our older facilities often costs a lot more in those facilities because of the building materials that were used in their original construction. Now there's very spicy language
like asbestos containing building materials, but it can sometimes be as simple as just even the roofing materials to match roofing materials or even some of the masonry work. You get a pretty good look at how
cost escalation can go up pretty quickly, even just some of the plumbing materials that if you were to go behind the walls in a facility like the old Blair High School, which is occupied by Sims and Sligo Creek, or Carver to go behind
the walls to fix something, maybe a more extensive project than it's originally scoped for, because of what you find and need to actually fix to bring it up to code. This is actually something that Miss Wolff has mentioned a number of times, is that when we do a renovation project, we actually have an
obligation to bring that system back up to code for today's standards, not the standards in which the building was constructed. This amplifies the cost of projects like Carver and some of our older facilities. So I mentioned this
because sitting at a facility condition depleted index value of 0.54. But I would expect this to amplify quickly over the next several years. And for this particular property that
the board controls for it to get much, much worse very, very quickly. This is also an opportunity. And so today we want to talk about how this facility, amongst other facilities, could be an
opportunity for the school system to explore some new and innovative ways to address some of these challenges. So I'm going to ask Miss Sueoka to talk through a little bit about Carver as a facility and then
talk about those opportunities, and then we're going to do a little bit of an exercise together where we get to imagine the future. So we wanted to start by talking about sort of central service functions. Right. We have services spread all over the
county right now. And while that might be good for our cross-functional teams, right, for staff that maybe need to be dispersed in these new regionsaa caregiver, and even many of us at central office, a one stop shop would be incredibly
helpful. If you're ever over at 45, you see people in and out of the HR and RSK, which is our employee employee service center, right? I mean, people have been there incredibly a lot over the last month with benefits rolling in. We have background checks that happen at the current CSC. We have
international enrollment. All of these things are happening at different facilities across the county. And as we start to reimagine this property, wouldn't it be great if our caregivers and our parents and everyone could come to one stop and maybe do multiple things at
one time, and they don't have to disperse themselves across the county? We've changed the name. Instead of CSC. Modifications to Central Services Headquarters and in parentheses, CSC replacement. This is thinking of both the site where the CSC building is and the vacant former Rock
terrace property. This is all one, and we'll show you a site plan here in a minute. It's 31 acres across both of those facilities. The parking lot, the open grass area behind that. And we also really want to acknowledge, we know that part of this has a great historical
context to it, and that it's important for us to preserve that view shed and the historic landmark of it, and to honor the Carver name and legacy. But we also have a great opportunity with this site to reimagine what this could be for us as a school district. So
here's an existing map of where many of these facilities are. You have Concord Center down sort of in the southern part of the county. You have Rockinghorse, you have Carver, you have the sites, you have the former Carl Sandburg Spring Mill, again, just all scattered
throughout, all providing different services to our families and for our staff. We want to look at consolidating many of those. Some of those, a couple of those will go to the 750 progress way, the new warehouse that we talked about.
But many of these, we want to come and consolidate into this sort of new headquarters for M.C.P.S. at the Carver site and the former Rock terrace. So let's look at this site. We have drawn a big red outline of sort of this wonky shape. It's
31 acres across. That to the left hand corner is the former Rock terrace. That is a vacant building for us right now. You can see the CSC footprint in there, and if anyone's walked in there in a long time, it is really easy to get lost in there. Lots of up and down, and
you're sort of moving in a constant circle. And there's a lot of parking lot space too. It's a big property for us to reconsider. It is something the board has complete control over. And as Doctor Taylor mentioned, it was built in 1951, but we are in need of some major system upgrades are, quite
frankly, just demolishing part of the building while still preserving the historic nature and footprint of it. So that brings us to a very exciting moment of let's think creatively. There are other potentials here for alternative capital financing, and we want
to talk about this in the context of Carver, but also in the larger scale of things. I'm going to walk people through what this means. So you often hear the word P3 that stands for public private partnership. So we as the school district are the public partner. And we would partner with a private
company, a developer often to really think and modernize our facilities. This can be done in a number of different ways. So we would as a district, identify a need for this, whether it's a group of facilities and we can work with
an advisor, we work with that private partner and a team. Often it's a number of people that they bring to the board or to their table. It could be a contractor, a design team, the Financers and the backers. To that, they help us design the build and finance this project.
The advantages for us under the why we should consider it is often provides a faster delivery method. Cost certainty. You can include long term maintenance should you wish to include that as part of the project, and budget smoothing.
Really, the thing for us to think thoughtfully about as we consider this as an opportunity for us are the contracts. It is important that we have a really tight scope and that we aren't making changes, which we are known to do throughout the design and construction process. We need to come up with the
scope, give that to developer and they move forward with it. That is key for these projects to be successful. We currently have funding and we haven't really gotten to all the county wide, but we did want to call this out specifically in the facility planning line item. We
have $3.5 million in there, and FY 27 and 28 that is intended to fund a consultant for the elementary boundary study that we've been talking about, perform any necessary feasibility studies in the upcoming years. Also, we plan to continuously update at least
a quarter of our portfolio for the facility condition assessment, and this includes funding to hire an advisor for us to think about our entire portfolio. Not that we would do all of it, but for us to really assess the whole thing for a P3 model, keeping Carver at the top of mind for us. So that
advisor would help us review our portfolio, assess our needs, and identify potential properties that would be of interest to the development community. Again, you can add maintenance to that. There's a number of different ways to develop the contract. We've
been looking closely and have met with the Prince George's County Public School. They have done two packages and two different phases, and we've put some of the detail in there for you and the public to read. They have a lot of great information on their website. Also, wonderful lessons learned
that we can take advantage of, which is incredibly helpful for us. And other school districts have done different scales of this as well. It might just be one project. This is probably one of the largest that has been done in the country. But again, it doesn't have to just be the schools. It could be thinking about our additional
infrastructure across the county that we need. And so with that, I'm going to pass it back to Doctor Taylor to think about how could we reimagine the Carver campus. So one of the largest pieces of this capital improvement program and
capital budget that we're proposing does have a reimagination of what the Carver campus could be. It's an enormous footprint in terms of square footage, but also of cost. And so thinking about
this in a more holistic view of one, how could we spare that cost in part to the taxpayers, yet also deliver economic development to the community and leverage some of the great
location that our campus is right now? Being near the Government Center and the county seat of Rockville is a huge advantage. Also, making sure that some of our resources, like our Welcome Center, are in a geographic area that some of
our families can get to utilizing public transportation and even our employees. Utilizing public transportation is particularly important if you want to advance the slide. So oh, did we go back one? Sorry about that. So what I
would ask is that this could be a great project for partner to work with us, and a good example of us going into the the P3 space where this could generate a really significant win win, not just for
Montgomery County Public Schools, but also for our community and and leveraging the assets that we currently have right now by enhancing them. I will say this. This is a particular area of Rockville
that could see growth in a number of spaces, whether it was retail, restaurants, housing, private office space that gets leased out community services and could really be a one stop shop, not just for M.C.P.S. families, but also
Montgomery College, those that are living in the Rockville area and those who are coming outside the Rockville area to Rockville to receive a lot of that support. It's really excited. We're excited about this. We think that this is a great opportunity in a way, for
this very large project to be a little bit more right sized from a budget standpoint to where our county funding partners can also share in our excitement and be enthusiastic about tackling something this big. So with that, we're going
to keep moving to the next two sections. We're going to move into the CIP prioritization data that D.J. will lead us through. All right. We're almost done. So stay with us. But we're going to go over some more data. We've you know, we've made a pretty significant transition from the key
facility indicators to this, this new CIP prioritization. Miss Stewart, I'm looking at you for years working as the CIP chair for MCPs PTA. You wanted more transparency and you wanted data. So we have really taken taken a really
significant approach to really provide that. So the community has really seen these slides probably 3 or 4 times now where the building condition is weighted the heaviest. And we're going to dive a little bit deeper into each one of the different criterias. So the
first one with the heaviest weight is our building condition which is the FCI depleted value, which is on our facility condition index page. On the M.c.p.s page. So this aligns with the IAC heavily.
They have what's called a Maryland condition index which incorporates building condition. It incorporates educational adequacy, size of classroom spaces. This is just a modified and custom version M.C.P.S. version. So you can see that the IAC breakdowns and
categories are very similar to ours. The biggest difference would be the satisfactory, which is 0.3 to 0.44. And for the IAC where we do 0.4 to 0.49, and this adds a little bit more parity to our rankings, which
we thought was needed. And I'm going to pass it to Andrea for the educational adequacy piece. We're going to walk you through an example at the end, using eastern to kind of show you how the calculation actually works. But if you use the FCI, if someone scores a 0.55, they
would have received their score would have been 0.75. And because it's weighted, you would multiply that 0.75 by four. So again you'll see that play out in the eastern example. So for the educational adequacy piece there are three parts to this. There are daylight access.
So do all of the core classrooms have access to daylight. Yes or no. Simple score of 0 or 1 air quality. And we have three sections here that you receive either a score of 0.5 or 1. And I have two more slides that are going to walk you through this and more
detail. So hang with me and I'll walk through that in more detail. And then the class sizes are at least 90% of the classrooms. Within the 10% of the Ed specs you receive a zero. The 75 to 89%. You received a
score of 0.25, 50 to 74% of the classrooms, a 0.5. So really, the more classrooms that are further away from our Ed spec standards, the higher you scored on that, right? We're trying to get from an equity standpoint, we want all of the classrooms to be as close to that ed spec standard as
possible. And this whole category, those three scores. So the daylight the air quality and classroom are averaged and then weighted by two, because this is 25% of your overall score, because lots of people have asked us about the air quality, wanted to provide some of the back end data. So I
believe everyone is aware we have air quality sensors in all of our classrooms across the county, which is great. We have live data that we can access and can use for, you know, our understanding of where the systems are. We're constantly tracking them from a trending
stability standpoint as well. But for this particular purpose, we were able to use those to help generate this ranking. So the IQ sensors themselves track CO2. The PM is particulate matter, 2.5 VOCs. And then they
also take into account temperature and humidity, which we put in that fourth line comfort index. And then we're also taking a look at trend stability. So knowing sort of public health data and information we took each of those different parameters and
weighted them as well. So we assumed we took the CO2 as 35% of the overall weight. The PM 2.5 is 25%, the VOC is 15%. Your comfort again, which is that temperature and humidity at 15%. And then the trend stability. Was it just sort of
a one time that these sensors were high at the CO2, or was that a constant reading that was 10%. And we have additional notes for those that want to dig in on the right hand side from there. Those then received a scoring method. So we give
the far right two columns are probably the most helpful. So in the case of CO2, if you scored a 60 in there for your parts per million, that is then weighted at 35%. So you have a score of 21. If you kind of
keep going down row by row by row, your VOC was 100, that's 15% you get a 15 score if you total the 21 and the 20 and the 15 all the way down. For this particular example, you would have a score of 76, and then you would go back to this slide
in the middle here. And that puts you in the middle right. So you would get a 0.5. So we did that for every single school in the attachment. We didn't share it in the slide deck. But as attachment a part of this presentation is row by row for the 52 schools. What
they each received in the different categories. All right. So utilization and enhanced student needs. Those are very straightforward data sets. You can see the utilization is the capacity versus enrollment.
Whether a school is underutilized or overutilized. And that's important obviously because if they're over utilized they probably need an addition or some oth services as well as enhanced student needs. And we rank these based on free and reduced meals or
farms rates. And you can see the different thresholds there. And each one of these carried a weight of 1 or 12.5%. So if a school was over capacity over 100% capacity, it would score
one times one. So it would receive a one. If for farms rates you were at say 27%, you would be at 0.25 because you would have 0.25 times one. So we will go to the next slide which will give you an example. This is eastern. So eastern
received a final total score of six. And you can see the breakout. So on the bottom left you can see the different criteria. Our building condition which is weighted 50% or four times they had that highest threshold of an FCI the
depleted value. So their category score was one. And you multiply that by four because it holds the most weight. And it received a weighted score of four. That continues throughout the other criteria. So their utilization was 101%. That kicked in a category score of
one. Multiply that by one, and so on and so forth. So you can see that along with the free and reduced meals or the student needs, as well as the educational adequacy. And one thing to point out sort of why we differentiated, we took Iac's model and we tweaked it
because especially for the educational adequacy, they're not digging into the IQ. I don't think as much as we did, and we have some really smart people here that dug into this data for us. And their classroom sizes are different than ours, than what our Ed
specs are. So we really wanted to cater to the M.C.P.S. programs and what we expect in our school buildings. So hopefully this is sort of a breakdown of how we came. And there there is a final data set at the yeah, this is the 52 schools ranked in order.
Elementary schools are in the white text. And then the secondary school is in that orangish color. So you can see the different rankings by overall rank and then elementary versus secondary. Because when we think about holding schools and things like
that, that is definitely something that we plan for is, you know, we're not going to do all secondary at the beginning and we're not going to do all elementary. We want to have a blend, and we should have an attachment at the very, very end that breaks down category by category for every single
school that's on here. It's also important to note, as we continue our facility condition assessments, we are going to be ranking more and more schools. So we will periodically be updating that facility condition index or assessment website. So everyone just
periodically check on that. All right. So one of the bases of our CIP is creating infrastructure with purpose. And I think you all have seen that throughout different county wides and all the discussion revolving a lot of different topics. So we've
already covered the Carver headquarters. And in lieu of talking about holding schools, our holding schools need some love too. They have been abandoned for quite some time. Some of our roofs are 30 years
old when they should be changed, you know, replaced every 20 years. So we really want to upgrade some of our holding schools, not to the extent of building a new building per se, but just making that student experience. I think Miss Montoya was talking about it and just making that student
experience and staff experience, you know, a lot more livable for your duration of your construction projects. So this line item here, the holding school improvements would be $11 million for each of the four elementary school holding
schools. We have the materials management building relocation, our new warehouse that we'll talk about, and then also the transportation and regional support facilities, which I think Doctor Taylor touched on a little bit during his kickoff presentation. It's the same map,
but we're just going to look at it a little differently. So before we were looking at those purple pentagons, which is our central service functions that are spread throughout the county. But as important as it is to streamline our central services, it's also important
to have regionalized services. So, you know, in terms of transportation, we have been asked for, I want to say, decades, probably at this point, to be relocated off of the Shady Grove Depot site. And we have not been able to
accommodate that for quite some time. So just to orient everyone, the Shady Grove Bus depot is that large yellow dot. And we also have some some of our other bus depots, whether it's West Farm, Bethesda, Clarksburg or Randolph also. So
if you want to go to the next slide so you can see this, this map really cleans up really well from all those six purple pentagons into one purple pentagon, which is CSC, but it also regionalizes services,
both transportation and some of our support functions. So right now we're working with the county for Dover Road, which is in Rockville. But the superintendents recommendation also has two new bus depots which are on already board
owned sites. So we don't have to go through that land acquisition process. We already own it. And those are Northwest Elementary School number eight and Wooten Elementary School number seven. And what that would do is that would allow us
to vacate the Shady Grove site, which currently holds about 495 busses. So what this would do is not only get off that site, but regionalize those transportation services. Reducing operation cost is is key. And as we mentioned, 750
progress way will be our centralized warehouse that will allow us to get off all of the properties that we have on Stone Street, as well as Lynbrook Center, former Sandburg Center, Concord, like there are multiple buildings that could and functions that
could consolidate into one property and be so much more efficient. For those of you that came out to the warehouse and had a chance to tour it, it's actually worse than the picture Show, I would say, and
it's probably our worst. It's in the worst condition of any facility that we have in the county. I think everybody would probably agree with that. So as Doctor Taylor stated, how can we run a world class education system, the largest in the state of Maryland, when we have
support and office spaces like this? So this is a conscious effort. You know, we have we're working with that lease with the warehouse. And this would consolidate, I mean, so many functions and talking about a fun exercise and reimagining
the way m.c.p.s. Operates this this is it. So this is one of the large items on our list as well. I've already gone over the holding schools. We I think we've gone over that quite extensively. So our recommended
holding schools would be Sims for our secondary would be Sims for the down county, what we're going to call Silver Spring Middle School Center, as well as Crown for a high school holding center. It is important to note that Crown could hold could hold middle schools as
well, so we didn't really touch on that earlier. But if there were a renewal or renovation at a middle school, we could definitely utilize Crown for that as well. And then we would be expanding from the four that are on this map to then
obviously existing Sligo Creek. And then we have a bunch of follow up information. I don't know if we want to go slide by slide or if you want to pull. Let's stop right here for questioning first before we go to follow up questions. So we
appreciate the board. Certainly welcome innovative funding and financial approaches in the county that that we have a generous taxpayers to provide resources. But any ways that we
can partner with private philanthropy organizations that is better for the system and better for the county. So I'm going to open up questions. I'm going to start with Miss Stewart. I appreciate the shout
out. Thank you. I can tell a lot of thought was put into this. There's a couple questions and one of them is about the FCI score because we I have gotten some feedback
that it wasn't it didn't seem to be actually representative of what is going on in that school. So it was explained to me that this is a review of how of what was designed at that
school. But the design itself was inadequate. It didn't really factor into the score. Could you explain that a little better? So I think the one that's come up most is Ada in terms of design, where it's
only going to take into account if there's an elevator there, it's going to take into the age of the elevator. And when does that need to be replaced? Versus from a design standpoint, it's not going to look at. Well, you should probably add another elevator over here because that's a better circulation
standpoint or a ramp over here. It's not getting into that level. It's only about the existing systems that are there. It's just about the conditions of the components in the building. And I think it does not do that. We have tried to be very candid. That's another level that we'd like to
continue to look at. But we are also solving many of those challenges in other ways. And again, we haven't gotten to all the county wide Ada and the other buckets. But, you know, we have extensive reports that have been done, and we are trying to tackle some of those challenges using other funding,
not just through an entire replacement or renewal project. I've also heard that this could be applied to HVAC systems, that maybe the HVAC system itself was not designed well, and therefore you're only
measuring a system that wasn't designed well in the first place. Can you get into that a little bit? Yeah, I think that's one of the other feedbacks we received. You know, people have even given us great proposals, right of the disturbed minute, right of the student impact. It is just
taking into account it did survey our building service staff and our administrators there to ask for the nuance. So that's in the report that you guys can see online. But yes, from like an HVAC system, it is truly just taking into account the age of the system. Are
things working? It's not going to get into the nuances of on this day, this room is incredibly hot on this day. So those are things that we need to keep and take into consideration. And again, as we think about which systems to replace in the HVAC line item,
not just for replacement and a renewal, okay, that's good information that we will. This is an amazing starting point. But we will look to make this even more accurate. So it reflects the lived experience
in the building. And I think that's where the rubber hits the road. And I would also like to, in the future, think about maybe elevating the air quality portion here on page 62, the way you have weight, the weight
between daylight, air quality and classroom sizes. I would argue that air quality affects every day experience in that building more than the other two, because it is a health
issue. And so, for instance, my child had really bad asthma when he was very young. And could he deal with a smaller space? Yes. Could he deal with that as much daylight? Not great, but he could deal. But
did he have to actually miss school because of continued asthma attacks? Yes. So this is just the way I'd like for us to go forward. Again. Thank you so much for all the data. I look forward to digging into it.
Miss Montoya, thank you. I understand all of these issues are much more complicated than what I'm about to say, but bear with me. So at its most simple understanding, the P3, the public private partnership is
like a private loan at its most basic. Again, I understand it's way more complicated because there might be retail or housing or whatever could be imagined, but the idea is that a private entity would fund upfront, and then we would come up with some sort of arrangement like you have in
the PG County example, to pay it off. Yes. I think the best way to people describe it is it's a mortgage. It's just like our home where we don't have the upfront capital to often to pay for your home. So you take out that 30 year mortgage. It's sort of the same way. We don't
have enough upfront bonds and capital, so we are stretching the funding over a longer period of time. But with that, then comes also things we would normally see on mortgages and things. Right? If my house was, say, $1 million because this is Montgomery County, by the time
I pay it off, I might be at $1.85 million. Right? So this is going to be similar. And that's shown in that PG County example, which I really appreciate you providing a working example. Thank you. I do have another question, but I'll wait until the next round. Thank you. Miss Rivera-Oven.
Thank you. I appreciate the presentation. I learned a lot. I didn't know we had the sensors in the in all the classrooms. So that's we advocated for that. Yes, I know and I'm so glad it's in every
classroom. So but with that, if I'm looking at the schools that are ranked and I'm looking actually at some of the schools that we're talking about replacing, so that's not coincidental. But can you tell
me like a total score of six, like what is the worst score you can have? Like I'm trying to understand I'm trying to understand the ranking of it like 808. Okay. So for a two, a
one and a one, if you look at right, the weight, the weight of it, see, on the bottom left where it says building condition for times that would hold a weight of four plus two plus one plus one. So eight is the it's like you're over utilized. You have high poverty.
Your classroom sizes are small. Your air quality is terrible. The whole gamut and you're building condition is not great. So that is the top okay. So the highest score that we have is eastern middle which is why you
use it I guess, which is a six okay okay. I'm also like Miss Sylvester, a little bit concerned about. All the
requirements that we need to do to make our HVAC situation better in a lot of these schools. And when Doctor Taylor did his initial presentation, I mean, we're talking do we say
billion with a B, you're at 740 million to correct everything today. But tomorrow that cost goes up. Correct. And that's just and that's just that's just HVAC. We're not talking roofs. We're not talking water pipes. Right? That we know that
we're we're having issues with even this early in the season. We're having issues with. So I guess I'm also a little bit concerned of making sure that we take care of some of these schools who desperately need it,
especially. Because some of these schools do not have the advocacy. Some of them don't even have PTA. Yeah, yeah. And. I don't know if that's even a factor in some of the stuff
that we consider, but I really think the lack of advocacy needs to be a factor when we're taking into consideration a lot of these things, because I think one of the reasons why we got behind so much is because sometimes the loudest voices
got what they needed, and some of the other folks got left behind. So I really do not know how much I appreciate the work that you have done on this. This was probably monumental lifting. So I know you probably spent weekends away from your
families and kids to try to put this together, but I think this really helped us into looking into the future, investing in the right way, but also investing with an equity lens that I think was missing in this formula for for decades.
So I just want to say thank you. And, and I learned quite a Ms. Silvestre. Thank you. The process that you took us through for eastern here, I could you remind us there is a way for us, for the public to
do that, for their school to see the breakdown. Where can they find that all 52 schools are linked as an attachment? As part of this document on board docs. So they're in row by row. And you can see each of these, each of their scores. It's not on the CIP website. It's on it's on board docs. It was
posted with the presentation today. We can break it out as a separate document. But right now if the public is looking for it, they should skip to the end of what's posted online. And again, we can break it out. But it is there. Yeah. Just put it on the website as well so people can find it more easily.
And my question is, I have heard people say that we might be entering a good time to build because others will not be building. Could you help me understand why folks might be saying that? I'll let Mr. Mamoon add to this, but I
haven't heard that. I hope that that is right around the corner, and some things that might be leading us to that soon might be that some construction costs may go down because others are not building, and and
construction agencies may be looking to fill calendars so that that might actually be a huge, huge boon in our advantage, something that may help us tremendously is the cost of capital. How much does it cost us to take out a debt service, whether it's a bond
and if interest rates continue to drop, that absolutely will save us a ton of money in the future. And to leverage that and to take advantage of that makes a ton of sense. So in in some regards it does make sense and that we could be nearing a
point where it it makes sense to do a lot of construction. Some things that we're worried about though, right now, construction costs are continue to be very high. The the labor force for construction is construction is constricted dramatically. And those things
have driven up costs. But these other things may help in the near future. And I don't know Mr. if you've got more to add to that or not. Yes. I mean, some of the things that we have heard from the market is that there was an influx in the last few years because whether it's BTL or federal funding that
came in so that as they do dry up, that there might be and, you know, some, you know, some availability within the marketplace because as Doctor Taylor mentioned, there are unknowns. We are tracking, you know, construction costs as they're going up. And Turner
Construction came up last month and said this quarter's construction cost increase was over a 1%. That's just in one quarter. That went up by 1% from compared to last year. So things are still costing a little bit more. There are some uncertainties in the market
that we're seeing. We're getting, you know, these additional charges because of the, you know, the tariffs and and other unknown factors. So we're we're continuing to look at this. But there might be some opportunities coming down in the in the near future. Thank you, Miss Malone. I want
to say thank you for everything again as well. And for Carver specifically. I'm glad that we're looking at different opportunities. And while preserving the historical footnote of it, I also want to say that a lot of different advocacy organizations meet there, like MC student extracurriculars all the time
in auditoriums. So whenever we are exploring different ideas for what we can utilize it for, just keeping in mind the students that are consistently there all the time. And as for IQ, specifically on page 63, I just want to understand for
carbon dioxide, specifically when determining our scores as an example, score like 60, that would be considered like a good score in the target range. Correct? Right. Can you repeat your question? Sorry for your on slide. This slide. Yeah. So
next slide. So when we're looking at like example scores and we're determining our final IQ score 60 would be considered a good score because it's below a thousand. Correct. Right. Like it goes equals 800. Yeah. Correct. Because that's the you
know below the target range for Ashrae. So an internship that I did was about decarbonization within our school systems and our buildings in general. And a really cool thing that I learned about is that our HVAC systems and utilizing them efficiently is the best way to decarbonize our schools. So just keeping that in mind going
forward, I think, is really important for the public to know that as well. Everything's working towards a goal that's going to help out. Yeah. Thank you. Can we go to slide 67. And I also am on M.C.P.S. website.
When I type in FCI, PDF files pull up, I want to have an understanding of how many schools you have done and when are we going to finished the rest of the school. Give us a timeline. Then my second part
of the question is right now they are posted online as PDF full file. Is there in the future the way that we can actually be a little bit user friendly, to have to have the
the school or available in the more sortable fashion fashion for for people. So two part question. Yeah, we plan to complete all of them by the end of this school year. They go out every week to a new set of
schools. I will have to circle back with you on how many we've we've gone through at least probably two dozen more since we completed this initial list. And if you look on the website, you'll see more than the 52. Okay, so we are posting them in waves as we get them completed, and we will do so over the course of the year. Okay, I can
get you an exact number if you need that, but every week it's more. And yeah, happy to look at right now the FCI is in the table, but probably once we get completed, happy to look at putting in like an Excel file up there that would list all the schools and their FCI for an easy download for people.
That would be very much appreciated. Yeah. Miss Montoya, Mr. Can we talk about how we measure mold in the building
because. That has been a hot topic and again, affects health. And even if you have dehumidifiers and you put this, you know, extra resources into a school, sometimes you can
still get mold outbreaks. And can you describe remediation. And how do we stop the cycle? Yes, I will start, but I'm actually going to have a colleague come up and introduce himself. He is on our environmental team that deals
with this on an ongoing basis and really the expert of this. So yes, IQ and mold right, are all linked together. We are constantly really ensuring that we are not producing too much humidity in the spaces and that we are controlling that
temperature and the humidity control to not create moisture conditions such that mold will form. Brian, I will let you take that and talk about how you guys evaluate when you go out to the site, what the remediation looks like. Brian
Coyle, the sustainability and compliance team and Department of Maintenance. So yeah, mold can happen for various reasons. If we do a good job controlling humidity, then, you know, it's it can be usually because of a
source of water getting into the building, whether it's a roof leak, a pipe leak or some other way in which moisture can get in if it goes unchecked or unnoticed, or it's in a place that that it can't be seen, you
know, the material degrades and then the spores that are in the air, no matter where you're at, they can, you know, latch on if you will, and, you know, they'll start to digest whatever that material is, and mold will grow. And, you know,
that's when people start to notice color changes or, you know, different damage to the material. So yeah. So the big part of of control and mold, if you're controlling how much humidity you let in the building is, is, is then just
regular inspection and following up on maintenance needs to correct the water leaks, water intrusion. And yeah. So yeah the remediation side. So if it's if it's
material that's damaged the you know, the easiest thing to do is to remove it. Something like drywall ceiling tile once once that's removed that is the remediation. And then you replace it with new material. You know, assuming you've addressed the water issue on
hard surfaces like tables and whatnot, disinfection is possible. Depending on the scale of that. There's a team that can go out and do all that work. They've got the certifications from, you know, to to do the work and to use
the material that they use to disinfect. And they're trained on the PPE that they use. And I just want, as a follow up question, I don't, you know, we have measures and that includes moisture, but we don't see like a measurement for mold. And I
know that that can be problematic. But I wanted you to explain why we can't have that. Yes. So there is no federal standard for IQ for mold specifically. So we only
look for visual inspections. There is not samples that we take for that. We're looking Brian and the team and we have several go out. If someone makes a claim, whether it's a parent or staff member, they go, they assess the room. They confirm from a visual standpoint that yes, it is or
no, it's just dirt. And then we ask the building service to clean that instead. If we do confirm that they are visible mold spores, then we send out either our in-house and we call them our fit team. And as Brian was saying, they have been trained in mold remediation. If
the scale is too much or they are dispersed at other sites, which can happen in August, which is our busiest and peak time, right? That is when the conditions are the most ripe for this to happen. We do use other third party contractors on site to help with any volume issues. Thank you for
explaining that. Again, if we update our HVAC systems and take care of the plumbing issues and the waterproofing, then there should be less of a problem. So I look forward to that being less of a problem in the future. Thank you, Miss
Montoya. Thank you. I'm just going back to the criteria for CIP prioritization there on slide 60 is a wonderful breakdown of all the various factors and weights. And the question I have is basically where did this algorithm come from? Is this something that is
used by, for example, a state agency or county agency? How did we decide what the percentage weights are going to be? How did we decide how much points or where those breaking points are? Because, for example, for the daylight, some of these have nuance, right? So
for the free and reduced meals we break it down by quarter percentiles basically. But when it came to does a school have classrooms where there are no windows, it's either yes or no. So you could have one school where they get one point, but maybe it's only one classroom that has no daylight versus
maybe another school has. I'm going to throw a number out there 30. Right. And there doesn't seem to be any nuance in that particular category, but I see a lot of nuance in the others, especially like with the educational adequacy and things like that. So the initial breakdown, we looked at
other schools across both in Maryland, in the DMV area and across the country that have prioritization when it comes to their CIP. We sampled a bunch, looked at what made the most sense, and that is where we landed on this prioritization.
So we didn't sort of just come up with it in thin air. We tried to use other jurisdictions as examples related to the farms. That breakdown is actually based on the US Department of Education. So we very much where we could we wanted to take something from an existing standard so
that zero. Let me just jump to it for you all. So this low poverty, mid to low poverty, mid to high poverty and high poverty again is the federal standard. And that's where we could we applied that. There is no official standard when it
comes to access to daylight. And we agree the sort of the no. And the yes we started as we were exploring this with some and you get a half a point and then we had the whole debate of how much is some and is three too many or is five too many?
And that's where it got really gray. We could certainly go back to that and reconsider in future updates, but we did have a lot of back and forth as to yes or no. And at the end of the day, we felt like if there are classrooms, even if it's just two that don't have any
access and there are students sitting in there, particularly at an elementary school, which we have and have no access, that is not great. It is averaged across these three. I like the suggestion too, of thinking about IQ in the future, but that is where we landed with the daylight. Okay. And so
those classrooms, if we're saying yes or if we're saying yes, it's classrooms that also are actually in use. Correct. Right. Not because I know sometimes, again, with the utilization rates, we have various classrooms, but those are looking at schools where the classrooms are actually being used. But there is no there are no windows. Correct. And we kept it to core
classrooms. So there are many, you know, different support spaces where students are pushed into, you know, we did not include those because students are not in that the core part of their day. We really wanted to keep it to the core classroom. No. And I can appreciate that. And I'm a little sensitive to that actually, because people might
know or not know we don't have offices ourselves as board members, but we do have is these little cubbyhole things with no windows. And it's not a fun place to work in. So I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Let's move on to the last portion is follow up information that you're trying to address. Some of the
questions raised during our hearings or last work session, can I, as we were supposed to finish at one, board members also have other obligations. And and job as we understand
this is a part time job. And so let's keep our comments short. Questions direct in the discussion portion. Thank you. Please go ahead. Can I jump in really quick before miss starts?
I just want to clarify too, that we've really heard questions in two areas. One are sort of bigger thematic questions and two are no less important, but a long list of items that need addressed in schools. We are not bringing all of those items back to you
here, but we are going. We are creating a tracker for all of those items that we'll be able to share with the board and share publicly. So I just wanted you to know, even though you won't see those here, we'll be bringing that back. Appreciate it. Appreciate that. Appreciate that clarification.
Go ahead. Yes. And in the interest of time, some of these have lengthy responses. I will not read them all. You all in the public can read them and further detail. So I'll try to give a summary of what is on the slide. So a big topic that has come up a couple different times is the community use of
public facilities. Cuff, as we often refer to it, and ICB. This is data that ICB has shared with us for fiscal year 2025. We had 524,839 hours across our schools. As part of
an attachment to this board doc, you can actually look at each school, how many hours and what they received from a maintenance. I would again, lieu of going into too much detail. About a year ago we signed an updated MOU with them
that breaks down there a number of different ways that we are reimbursed. As you can see here on the right. So we are paid utilities. That is two fiscal years behind. So that is true that it says 2023. That is backdated. And so it's always
two years behind. They pay us for staff. This is building service. Schools receive maintenance line. In 2025. There were overpayments. So that was being adjusted. They also received custodial. So the maintenance line for schools is a once a year payment that the
schools receive. The custodial supply is a quarterly. Then there's other pieces like equipment excuse me, that are like AV if they use a piano or something like that. So I'm going to keep it at that and pass it to TJ so I can take a
drink. Sure. There was some follow up questions regarding state aid. So this is a breakdown of what we were awarded by the IAC. And then in terms of the overall state percentage. So you can see it fluctuates anywhere from 8.65%
to 16%. And we even give a historical context from the early 70s to 2020. So this just gives a breakdown for the awarded allocation, the total state awards throughout the entire state, what our percentage was, and then our
Built to learn funds that we also received. In the next slide, we were asked a couple different ways about Americans with Disabilities Act or Ada compliance data. We have shared a link here. We actually, as I mentioned, I believe in the
last public hearing, we did assessments back in 2018, reports were made available 2018, 2019. All of those reports are available at the link on this website. For the public and for you all to have access to. The thing I want to note is just the priority. So
in those reports and in their recommendations, they talk about priority one being accessible parking and accessible approach and entrance. Priority two being elements used for program services and activities. Priority three restroom facilities and signage. Priority four access to
auxiliary features and amenities and pathways along paths of travel such as water fountains and then priority five employee only area. So we are taking those recommendations. Again, we are trying to move through as many of the recommendations on the
list as we have funding available. Okay, these are the ones I'm not going to read word for word, but I will read the question and then just summarize for you all. The question was can the public access birth date, birth rates by area of the county to see
how it may impact enrollment projections? So we provided a link to the annual report from 2023. We talk about the kindergarten capture rate and how that's calculated both at the district as well as the individual school level. Gave an example in here as well.
Also related to sort of enrollment and development. What is the intersectionality of the projected development geographically and enrollment projections, including apartment buildings. And so we provided data talking about the approved housing pipeline. And I think that's probably the
most important thing to take out of here is until it's approved housing pipeline, we do not take that into consideration in the projections. All right. So we've talked a little bit about this last time, how state aid
is calculated. And there's a formula at the very bottom and a breakdown of the definitions. But essentially the state if we're building a replacement project or a capacity project, they want us to look at non-capital actions first, which are boundary studies. So
if school is, you know, underutilized, you know, the adjacent schools are underutilized. They would prefer us to do a non-capital action and a boundary study. This is going to play a pivotal part in our strategy moving forward because we see enrollment is declining. So as
we balance our utilization, we are going to be less eligible for state aid. If we do these replacement and capacity projects. Which leads us to our new strategy of doing these five systems at a time, because we do get 50% of a HVAC project
or roof project, if we couple that with windows, hardware doors and hardware ceilings and lights, that now becomes eligible. Enrollment is out of the as out of the formula. So as we approach these new construction approaches, we are now pivoting and going to be
able to get more state aid with that approach versus M.C.P.S. ballooning in enrollment and gaining 30,000 students over the last 20 years. So this will help us get cheaper construction projects expedited
and more state aid by doing the renovation approach versus these capacity driven projects. The next follow up, there was a clarification of the difference between the renewal, renovation and replacement, and which schools are identified as renewal versus renovation
versus replacement. So we listed those after each one. And just to refresh everyone's memory, the renovation is including at least five major systems. But we would envision here that many of the walls would stay. We would just be touching some of the systems
versus a renewal. We are really taking it down. As Doctor Taylor said to the studs, right. You're going to keep the structure, but everything else would be completely gutted and removed. Versus a replacement is a is a brand new building. The next question the public
would like clarification on how the FCI score is calculated. How are the different components weighted? Actually, hopefully many of the slides up above answer a lot of those questions. But we also talked about the score being zero,
being the best score, up to one being the worst score in here, and talked about how the FCI depleted value metric is useful in estimating the levels of spending necessary, and then what would it look like to consider inclusion of the automotive program with
addition of electric car program at Damascus High School? And so we thought that was a great suggestion. We will be working as staff to develop the overall program for the Damascus, and we will definitely take that into consideration. There was
expressed concerns that students and staff and current alt ed programs moving to different holding schools until permanent, all facilities are ready, which we have proposed at Spring Mill. We agree we want to make this the least disruption as possible for our students and our staff. And so
during this, we are going to work closely with our Division of School Leadership and Improvement to really confirm what is the best location. Do they stay at Northlake? Do they move to Fairland for a year while the construction takes place at Spring Mill? And then with a decrease enrollment of international students by 50%
and the increased need for pre-K seats, perhaps empty seats can be used for pre-K. The short answer is that we do plan to continue to increase pre-K seats, really also with the goal of making these full
day and not the half day. Artificial turf. So we wanted to have a few slides here, and we're happy to continue the conversation next week during the county wide, where we can talk about the different schools that are in the countywide, but wanted to walk through a couple slides. So why
is M.c.p.s? Adopted artificial turf as the high school stadium standard? And I think it's really important that what we have been talking about and a couple of the public testimony and what is included in the CIP, we are only having this conversation at the high school level. We are not coming to you all. And we're not saying as a
school district that we are interested in making all of our fields artificial turf. This comes down to equity and play time that is needed at the high school level. From an equity standpoint, we can have consistent playing surfaces across the school district. Again, at that competitive high
school level, you can have more play time. So the 1900 hours represents how many hours we have from a rented athletics PE. This is sort of an average an estimate across an entire school year versus how many hours we see for the grass from
a schedule consistency. There's virtually no cancellations with the artificial turf. It also provides great teaching spaces from a cancellation and no impact from a physical education standpoint during the day, from a community use, we have more time and space for
the school and the community. There is less maintenance for the artificial turf from both the time and the cost, and then a competitive balance for state events and the surrounding counties. We also talked about the county council and the
Office of Legislative Oversight, or Olo, is also what people refer to the report that it was conducted two major reports, and those are available online for people to review on the artificial turf. So they compared from 2011 and 2024, found that both arguments can
be made on both sides. Right. There's pros and cons to this. We understand that we are not not dismissing any of the extensive reports that this county has done. And many, many other counties have done so. An example being that while man made materials raise environmental concerns, artificial turf does not
require mowing. From an environmental standpoint, it doesn't require watering any fertilizer. Right. There's many advantages from that standpoint. And really the biggest clear difference from artificial turf, when you want to sort of continuously weigh the pros and cons are the many hours and the
weather and the seasons that we can do. The natural grass needs downtime to maintain the actual natural grass, and given our athletic and the amount of use that we need at the high school level, we just don't have that downtime to give it. You all
also asked us sort of cost and then what fields currently have it. So and we talked about this a little bit last week during the board meeting. Just to replace the turf. Doesn't take into account any track or any additional site work around in today's dollars is currently is
approximately $1 million. If you want a new turf field right. That would be new site work, new grading that's closer to that $2.5 million. We have 12 high schools, one middle school and one elementary school that currently have it. And you can see the years that those were
installed. And then Blair High School being one that is owned by Parks and Planning. A few other follow ups. There was photos requested of the alternative education. So we provided the link to the FCI.
It has many great photos in there for you all to see. It was also requested. What is the useful life of the exterior stadium bleachers? We do provide regular maintenance and inspection on those, and they should typically last 30 to 35 years. And then Edison was also brought up. There is shell
space, empty space in there. It's roughly around 9000ft. And in today's dollars, we would anticipate that to be 3 to 5 million to build out that space. And with that, those these are the two attachments that we've referenced, the entire CIP
prioritization with the breakdown of each of the different categories. And then that usage document that we talked about for cough. And I'll end on the timeline and happy to take additional questions. Thank you. We're going to go to the board questions or comment I do want
to I appreciate you bringing forward the turf discussion, because that has been a very heated discussion. And that is a issue that community member care about for the usage time
and also for environmental impact. Now technology is ever evolving. Technology is ever evolving. And I think at a not the time and day we need to
talk about. How have turf changed and also how have our technology of maintaining natural grass and the durability of natural grass also might have changed? I
myself would be very interested to see if we, as a system, can pilot at a middle school to look at, to say hey, if I. Deploy the newest technology
and maintenance effort with the grass field, how much would that cost? What is the usage possibility? That would be something I think would be very helpful in our discussion, as then we have comparison data
and as to talk about. Right? Yes, Miss Rivera-Oven, and we're going this way. I just want to say thank you for all the research and the work you have done. And really a week I
really appreciate. I think it's really important that the public understands that our facilities are used by the public as well. Just looking at the numbers, I was trying to get an idea of the hourly rate that we're being reimbursed, so I'll leave that. I'll leave
that to my I have that actually, that's part of my question. How much math if I'm looking at it correctly, the revenue was a little over nine. We spent about a little over six and a half. And so it's the rest of that. The difference that gets allocated as reimbursements is
that the correct mathematic formula? Because if that's the case, it's looking at $1.25 per hour. And that's just looking at the table. This is why this is why I don't do math. So. It's just dividing the just
dividing the amount of reimbursement by the number of hours used per school. And again, this is not M.C.P.S. saying we only the schools only should get $1.25. It's just based on what comes in and what has to be spent to run the facilities for those community uses. Right. So so you guys can
do the math a little bit later. But I think it's it's we we can say, I think safely that we don't get a lot of money out of it. Right? In a sense for, for all the maintenance that, that we do. And, and then a lot of the fields are also used, the
turf fields and so on. Right. It's not so I and that's why I wanted that information. But I just want to say thank you for that, even though I think we did redo our fees with them and so on. I think this is, this is,
this is this is a very generous offer. And, and I do believe in access to our, to our schools by the public. I think that is that is vital. But I think this exercise showed that we're not getting what we need for the
maintenance of the schools, of some schools that are overly, overly used. And I believe that formula for schools that are overly used, the formula, in my opinion, should be different than those schools that are are underused that don't don't get
as much. So my other question. Sorry, I lost my train of thought, trying to calculate things was what was the last thing we talked about? The last thing you just did, the last presentation, we just had the
it was. I wanted to ask. Thank you for the alternative programs for for Blair. Thank you for doing that. I know that that's going to be part of, of the asking of the
superintendent that we actually make these just like we're looking at Carver, we're looking at other things. I really think alternative programs need a lot of TLC. I think I know when you walk into school that is nicely painted and so on, your demeanor
changes your your immediately, you know, it's like it's it's just a different way than saying this is temporary. But for some of these young people, it's not temporary. In fact, some of these schools become a safe haven for them. And they prefer to stay at these schools
because they actually excel at it. And I think we need to kind of relook at the whole way that we we do that because unfortunately, right there, we have young people that feel that, you know, alternative programs that work for them
greatly. But then we try to push them back into the general population again, only to see them come back again, because there are things that, you know, alternative programs do give and it's more attention, smaller classes and so on. So thank you for for doing that. I
appreciate all the work that that you guys have done to answer our questions. Miss Montoya, thank you. I want to join Mr. Rivera-Oven just in the way that we approach our alternative education centers. Sometimes those are the students that need even more welcoming environments. And so
I get concerned about shuffling them through as well. So this year you're at Northlake, then next year you're going to be at Fairland, and then next year, right. The lack of stability is actually what can sometimes contribute to the reasons why the students need to be in those programs to begin with. So I appreciate that as it
relates to CPF, when I just did some very basic math based on hours and reimbursement, it looks like it's about $1.25 an hour. And so that's perhaps a conversation we need to have with our county, our friends at the county. But my question also, some of these reporting
hours just seem so low. Like for example, Poolesville High School, 11 hours. I'm shocked to hear that a high school would only have 11 hours of community usage, especially in a geographic location where there's not a lot of other places to community use. So I guess my question goes to
whether and it's okay that you might not probably don't have the answer now, whether some of our spaces are being used without actually going through CPF. I know it definitely impacts the kids. My kids are like, mom. The gym was a mess this morning. I guess there was
a volleyball tournament or mom and our maintenance staff are trying the best they can to come in. But I've seen myself. I drive by a school and it's like 9:00 and they're still hustle and bustle in the gym, so sometimes they're being used so late that then the kids come in the next morning, and I just don't know how our maintenance
folks are supposed to do their day to day, plus then clean up after, for example, the volleyball tournament. So I just want want to thank our maintenance, who are working so hard to try to turn our facilities over for the school the next day, but also just for all of us to be aware that. I just am wondering if, for example, sometimes there's
community usage that's not going through CPF. I would just say the Poolesville is likely low due to their construction that was happening last fiscal year. Okay, that makes sense. Okay, okay. I mean, there's even like Neillsville middle school I think had two hours or something like that. So some of
them just seem same thing. They were doing. Construction might be there for things there too. And it and Miss Stewart's been on a walk through with Woodland Elementary. They can't rent out until there is a board walk through. So we need once we get construction, we need you all to the final stamp of the correct. Okay, so there is that
piece too. Okay. Awesome. Thank you so much for the clarification, Miss Stewart. It felt really good to walk through woodland so they could finally use their school after hours. I wanted. So I understand you have some follow ups about artificial turf, but
we're going to revisit this topic. Am I correct at some point? Okay, excellent. And I do have one question that you might be able to answer today. Does the artificial contract include any maintenance of that
artificial turf in the actual installation of the contract? Is there any maintenance included? So we have an ongoing maintenance contract that is sort of it's funded out of the athletics department. If I probably turn around, Mr. Sullivan can talk about it, but
our team helps manage that contract as well. Again, from operation, it'll show in the athletics budget, but we do have a maintenance contract. They go eight months out of the year. They're there monthly. They were actually there a week and a half ago at sites, and they produced regular reports
that we post online. I'm familiar with the contract. I just wanted to know if there was any other maintenance besides that maintenance contract that's included, typically just the first year. Oh, the first year. Okay. That helps answer my question. I
think that concludes all the questions for today. I once again, thank you for a very detailed data driven. Prepped and and hello to Doctor Sullivan. You I'm sure we'll
see you in the next work session when we really dive into the topic of artificial turf. Thank you everyone, and we'll see you on the 11th. Ms. Yang. Can we just get a
absolutely motion to adjourn? Second, all in favor, please raise your hand. We lost the quorum. Okay. Unanimous with
those present. Thank you.