Board discusses bond budget increase to $17.1M from state match boost

And so I need to kick you out.

Actually, can we do the recording notice, the call to order, and then we'll do the pledge of allegiance, and then, yeah.

I'm still looking at the old due diligence.

Sorry.

I printed the agenda there for you.

Please begin with a recording notice.

Okay, thank you.

Before we begin, we want to share that we will be recording tonight's meeting. We do plan to share this recording publicly in the event that a student, parent, staff, or community member would like to know what was discussed. If you do not wish to be recorded, please let us know at this time.

Wonderful. Thank you. I will call tonight's meeting to order at 5.45 p.m.

Perfect.

If you're able, please rise with a pledge of allegiance.

To the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Yes. Thank you. All right.

So now I will begin our executive session. We've set aside 15 minutes. That agenda is board calendar and public records request summer review. Bonnie's been very busy.

I've been very busy. Yeah. Thank you. Any questions?

Any calendar things?

No. Okay. Good.

Then we will go ahead and jump right into our facilities update. I'm not sure who's going first tonight.

We're just going to all play.

All play. All play.

It's an open conversation, right?

No questions. Yeah. It's about the clickers.

You might have to turn it on.

Okay. You got it? That's the point.

I was going to say, maybe Matt does not know.

Matt, take the time down here, everybody.

It's doing what I can. It's been a long day for Matt. All right.

Well, we're hoping that we can have a great conversation tonight.

We're really looking forward to it.

And we're going to talk about these things here. We'll probably spend a good bit of time on budget. That will be kind of the next level of detail that we haven't kind of shared before. So looking forward to that. So with that, we're going to start with that topic.

I'll just kick us off real quick.

If you remember, at the last board meeting, we talked about a state match. So I want to kind of kick it off with that. One of the questions, if you remember, that we talked about was this idea of basically saying, we're not going to use a portion of the OES facility for educational purposes. What that does is it frees up what they call new and loo funding for that square footage. So it increases your ability for funding this round. And it also then, by removing that from the roles, essentially, from the educational square footage, when you come back in the next phase and you're doing additional work at the high school, it will not be classified as high school square footage because you haven't been using it for the high school. So therefore, you're going to have more capacity for state match funding next round. And then you asked us last time, well, so how does that change the state match dollar? So we wanted to wait until we got an official update. So we have that official update now. So if you remember way back when, when we were talking about the bond prior to going out to the voters, we had a range of state match and Liz had highlighted that just recently of like 11 million to 17 million. At the time we said we want to allocate 11 million of that towards the bond projects and we're going to leave the remainder unallocated so that you guys can figure out what to do with it after the bond passes. And it's basically a contingency item for the bond projects to ensure that we can deliver on all the promises that were made as part of the bond. So 17 million was kind of our cap we were looking at before. So now you can see on the screen with this update to how we're going to classify a portion of OES, that ups us to almost 22 million as our cap. So you'll see in just a second when we kind of go through the budget,

versus two categories.

So about the state match dollars includes soft costs.

So we should be looking at that column.

Yes, you should say that includes soft costs. So essentially we have the eight and the eight is 16 and then another six for the fun house

at the high school.

That's what's driving your total eligibility.

Which is great news. Yes, which is good news. Which is great news.

That was, right, we were doing 17 before.

Correct.

We were only using 11. So are we, if it's 22, we're still only using 11 or we're.

That's what we're going to talk about tonight.

We're using 11 so far.

That's what we're going to talk about. And we do have an ask. This is last Friday update and what we'll talk about today. And again, that's bond one. There is still available state match for bond two.

Outside of this one.

Outside of what you're looking at today.

Okay. Okay.

So that's not bond one, bond two.

That's bond one dollars. So bond two. And then bond two comes. There will be more.

So different high-level buildings, the curb section of the high school. If that's torn down, that all of a sudden you get more there.

You get on house.

Like the high school, if you turn on the west wing, if you turn on the portion that we are using at OES,

those will all generate state match dollars because those buildings are all old enough to qualify for state match. Yes.

And I just remember we were leaving a cushion, right?

Yep.

And that's why I'm double-checking that.

The intention is to still leave a cushion.

We still want a cushion, but the 22 is what?

The 17 used. Right. Correct.

Because it's really basically we'll be getting matching for those three categories. So we're kind of rounding down it's technically a little, you know, when we have the 21, but...

Right. Okay. All right. Well, we're going to go one of those four, so... I think we already had a good segue.

So on the left of the PowerPoints, we've talked about the initial funding sources. So that below is the 148.3. So we've been talking about this for when the bond passed, so it's the bond amount plus the state match of the 11-1. The updated project budget, we are proposing to allocate the 17 million out of the 22. So we'd be allocating a tad bit more of a similar ratio of what we were doing prior. So that was what we're proposing for our project budget to have the same bond amount and then the 17.1, which is that range we came to the board last month for, as well. And so on the budget development side, how we're looking at it was that like the possible is a 21, that's really 22 million, and then the allocation for the bond projects, the total projects would be 17.1. And what we wanted to talk about at the next slide is some of the components of the bond project and promises that the district has increased the budget to because of some community components that are really beneficial to the community. So that's added owner scope. We'll go through that in the next slide. And then some cost increases that we've talked about briefly and some of the updates and estimates that ScanSco can talk about as well. And then we've also added an owner contingency component to various projects, not just, you know, one project across because of some elements of the complexities of things that we've been finding, some of the due diligence we've been finding. So that's an additional treatment.

Can I ask a quick question about the state match? Is this guaranteed because it's in the future or can the state's budget affect this?

If you ask OSPI, it is one,

not guaranteed.

Two, they've never not funded the SCAP projects like ours when we go through the process. So that's the two ends of it's not sure, but it's actually been a very solid thing versus like something that the legislature is individually allocating dollars towards, which is a whole nother thing that it is.

Well, what happens if,

because this does come out of the educational budget, correct?

Or does it...

No, there's a separate item for...

Yeah, a separate line item for construction.

Oh, okay.

The school construction has its own plot. They can divert out of that plot, which they did post-COVID, but that plot is there and funded.

So they have, in the past, diverted money from it.

If you remember post-COVID, no one was passing school once. So there's millions sitting there.

Right.

But the dollars are there and allocated. We have to work through a process. If you establish the authority or change the authority, we have to re-work that resolution. And then our team will work with the state as we work through the D process to put that number aligned to state reimbursable categories. And then through our documentation each month that Cliff and Marcy do, we can claim state

match over time.

Because it doesn't come in one clean pot. It comes in several pots. And the D form process, as we go back and forth, helps to delineate where do we qualify, how would that 17.1 or 11.1 be distributed, what part would be available through construction, through architect, through owner's rep services, that sort of thing.

Okay.

It's kind of like a co-pay system.

You can pay your co-pay and then they pay afterwards.

And in typical state fashion, we have to spend 100% of our obligation before we can get a

dollar in state matching funds.

So how we budget and forecast that is very important.

Okay.

Why are, why do we have a high school project and then a high school CTE project?

Because the high school CTE, that, that line represents the CTE building itself. Well, you'll remember we said remodeling the current spaces and turning them into, so kind

of just a separate piece. It's really a remodel versus. Yeah. The next slide, I think. Next slide? Okay. Okay. Okay. Questions?

I was going to say, if you could build the CTE ring for .95.

That's a key. That's a key. That's a key.

Oh, sign up right now.

These two are ready to do it. Okay. We're going to grab your hand. You have to give out the pen. Quality might suffer. Let's go. All right. Milk crates, milk crates. I'll grab the screen. Magic. I always say, you guys,

this is more detailed than the other slide, and there was a couple things that we had updated this, so I want to make sure this slide. But the projects are vertical, so they're in the columns. Elementary school is the first column. and then the CTE, and then just what we're calling high school and district-wide. That was kind of a new allocation that we had to clarify that it was tenant improvements at the high school, but also had some district-wide improvements as well.

Is that getting rid of the portables and whatnot

and all that? Yeah, yes. So there's a component of getting rid of the portables,

and then there's also an all-campus projects that we deemed as really important. There's a component that was important

for the voters as well.

We wanted to make sure that some of that was allocated as well, that maybe wasn't specific really on. So how we've broken it down to make sure that we answer some of the questions too was to list all of the projects broken down from construction cost to soft cost. We don't have to get in the weeds about it too much. We could focus on just the construction cost right now, and then we wanted to make sure that we understood the projects and how they're outlined.

So can we feel good to chime in in the meantime?

Yeah, if you see at the very bottom of that, it says, Director Munoz is portable to the high school, and then all-campus projects. We refer to that as standard of care. That could be a lot of things, but I know that the board

doesn't want to have habs and habs-nots

that we've had in the past, depending on what school

you go to.

So looking at, as we get towards the end of this project, how do we equalize the experience and have a standard of care for all students across the district, whether that's the temperature of the room you're in, or the technology you have access to. We don't want it to be a lottery system for students, so we want to have standard care across the district. So I asked Liz to outline that in the budget, so that we would have space in the budget that's safe, so that the community knew that we're interested in making it

accessible for all kids.

So specifically HVAC upgrades to tinted heating and cooling. Definitely looking at keyless controls, safe, secure systems, so as we design what the new facility was had, what's replicable in our other facilities. And then lastly, furniture technology. So as we redesign and rethink the next vision for elementary learning, we want to make sure it was furniture, tech, or sound projection, we can bring those to Tarmigan Ridge as well.

Good, because when they built Tarmigan OES discovered that you only got new furniture if you were a new building. And so, and there was no budget for furniture,

no matter how old your furniture was.

So thank you for being here.

That's the intention is that ideally we can not only make sure we've delivered on promises and we have enough flexibility, and we won't know some of that until we get out of the ground

and reach milestones we'll talk to you about.

But then also, as we work our way through, we want to make sure we're elevating across the system as best we can.

Thank you. And road to Whitehawk? Yeah. What's that?

You know the entrance road, the long road, call it any white lane is what we're joking about.

Can we talk about? Yes.

Setting that aside as a separate cost, knowing that we don't know how that's going to be happening, so deciding when do we build that road, do we build that road?

What cost two million?

That's with cost escalation to 2030.

Got it.

So saving up money just in case of what if, but if we tell our city partners that we plan on building that,

we want to set the money to the site.

And the plan on that road is really not parents or people,

it's district usage, right?

Into it or are we?

No, it would be full buses, parents, in a roundabout so that we could have two directional.

No, that would be the main. I mean, if the roundabout.

I'm saying if the roundabout's not there, and we're cutting the road in, is that road being used?

You can still build a road. Okay.

And whether it's used or not, it comes down to the local jurisdiction.

Okay.

And working with WASDOT about under what circumstance could be used. Without any kind of proper signaling, right turn at best would be what it would be limited to. And that's not planned out future work to do with the city. Whether it's feasible or makes sense to build with or without the roundabout. And part of our SEPA traffic engineering work is what would be the primary entrance,

and how do we appropriately mitigate that? I don't know if this is the appropriate time to ask this question. So if it's not, just tell me.

But when you're talking about holding on to $2.2 million of a bond project that you've gone to your taxpayers for, how long can you hold that without accountability to the taxpayers? Because we're charging them for that.

Yep. So right now we have to schedule to the end of the bond. To your point.

We did it up to 2030 right after, pretty much after we've moved into both buildings.

At that point, we,

Fisher cut bait is probably, we need to discuss that. So it could be, you know,

the board discussion.

You could build that right now for $1.4 or $1.5 million. Without cost escalation, put that road in. But we're trying to work with the city. What does it look like if you build a road to nowhere?

You know, what does that do for our city partners?

So we're trying to work closely with the city on their timing

and what their wishes are. So we couldn't just use that as a bus. Yeah. We couldn't use that as a bus on the road.

There's lots of possibilities. The entrance and egress from the state highway onto our property is jurisdiction in the city. So the city could determine whether or not we can use that as ingress or egress.

With our traffic partners.

We're working right now with some traffic engineers in the city are working together to kind of bear it all out.

Okay. But Melissa's right.

There is a time period that we have to use the money by.

If it's bond funds, three years from the date of sale, and you'll have three sales. So if your last sale is in 2028, that puts you conceptually to 2031. But other money and capital projects potentially could go. So there's ways to make that move.

So if that's making an assumption, though, putting it out to 2030 is that we're going to get approval for bond two

and bond three, correct? No.

That's currently the approved bond would be the sale one, sale one, two, three of our current .

Oh, okay. Got it. Got it. Thank you.

So if we get to the end of that third sale, and we don't have a use for that money, we have to figure out how to spend it.

Yeah.

You need to build a road board and decide to spend it for them. All those other things you put in the resolution,

or give back to your voters. Okay.

Or is that 2 million your state match funding?

Correct.

So there's different options.

That's a good point. Okay.

And right now the dollars, I think, is 1.66.

So just to clarify, it's about 1.7.

We're projecting 2 million for that road, right? But is that what interest and everything is saying

that it's going to cost in 2030, 2031? Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty .

We're also looking at it from a standalone package

at that point, right?

So it's significantly cheaper if our civil company can do it while we're building an elementary school compared to, fast forward to 2030, and then there's an active school. Maybe we can blow it out in the summer. Probably it's a pretty small road, but we still have to procure a separate civil company

to come and do the work. So just .

We haven't let them just build the road in the elementary.

It's just for pricing purposes.

Having that as a separate alternate gives us,

what if we do this?

We have a nice, neatly package to separate,

so we can have flexibility. And our concern is building a road in nowhere, right? Perception, yeah. Perception. Yeah.

You drive by it every day and you see the road.

Yeah. And it's not being used up. That's your camp. Yeah. Way up to the field.

Or the misuse of that road.

Like there was always on the wall. Yeah. Yeah. You know, if you had a contract, you pin in and connect the door. That was it. You know it very well already. I drove past the bridge. I said the bridge still is there. I think the bridge still is there. Oh boy. Okay. Good questions.

Are there railings that are being on the road?

Oh goodness. Or now. Yeah.

Well, thank you for thinking so diligently about that and making it a discussion point

because it would have been lost without it.

A couple other small things to highlight is

we have some current sales tax and I always like to estimate

mid-year we expect the sales tax increase.

And then the soft cost.

We haven't gone into a lot of detail on this with the board but generally where we added that contingency

in the previous slide at

this time and it could be rolled over to the next project.

About the move at the high school. Thanks for remembering that. And then on campus project. I think we wanted to go into the detail of some of the additional components of the school before from the initial bond school. So I want to talk about what was added

kind of on our, I will say, Ed and I on your behalf or the community's behalf, I don't know how to say it. So when we originally built just your standard elementary, these things are not included in the standard elementary. So these are strictly owner us saying we want this for the sake of the community or for the sake of the school district. So the gymnasium in an elementary, you typically have gymnasium that is, even if it's like a legal size picture,

you can't fit a chair on the edge. You went there with your kids and grandkids

where you can't fit a chair. We knew having a gym that size would not be useful for K-12 use because there's no spectators. A lot of them, we don't have a single sport,

even seating,

bigger sport that doesn't have parents come. So I asked that, could you make seating? Also, we have a really unique community that when we have like elementary assemblies, a lot of parents come and there's no one for the mistake,

you know, at OES.

So we thought, why not have a section of bleachers?

I don't remember. Do you remember the numbers? Oh, I should have looked at three rows. Yeah.

It's over 200, 250.

200, 250 seating.

So you can have the parents come, they can be seated in adult seats, not sitting on the floor, standing on the edge.

Kind of like tarmac. Well, probably more than tarmac.

More than, but kind of like it, but more.

So a picture like a middle school varsity basketball game

could go there, you know,

or a C team high school game could go there. So we have space to use K-12.

As well as some community competition too.

So that was over $1.2 million addition there for that. The field, when I saw that and saw the turf, that was a rectangle and went, could you paint a field over that and tell me how big that is? And it was like, oh, that's getting close. Why not just increase that and make it community usage, K-12 usage with lights.

There's no community talk about that.

There will not be an audio system.

There will be speakers.

There will be lights only because it gets dark. So let's say you have your JV boys soccer team from middle school over there. It gets dark so we need lights.

There might be games there.

But this is not a place where the varsity football team is going to be having their game.

Right, right. So.

But it will provide more field access for us and the city.

Correct.

We are the source for the city.

And we have an additional, just colored turf, but it's a little bit more aggressive turf on the outside of it for a walking trail for the elementary students. That's like a walking track. And for our community, it's a walking track.

So folks have to walk on that. So how long will the walking track be? Around the perimeter.

It won't be a 400 yard. You know, it won't be a 400 track.

It's a rectangle. So it would probably, you'd probably have to go like 4.5 times to do. Yeah, 300. But that's great.

I just had a conversation with Carter about the fact that there's no place for like fifth graders

to increase. Correct. Yeah.

So a huge place.

No more mud. There will be no dirt.

No child will touch dirt at recess. So that was a pretty significant addition. But for the price point, we can't even buy turf, replacement turf for that price point. So the increase was minimal for the huge benefit.

Will this be something enclosed? Or can you use it for like the public too?

It will be enclosed with a fence. So it will be fully enclosed with a fence. A four foot fence on the playground side. And a six foot fence on the other three sides.

So it will be enclosed. It can be rented. Similar to our stadium.

Whether or not we want to lock it in the evenings

and make a decision. Yes. It can be open.

And it can also be secured. But during the day it has to be secured.

Right. Right. Right. And it will be turf? Artificial turf. Artificial turf. Yes.

It will have lacrosse, football, soccer, and I think literally baselines kind of.

Cool. Yeah. Additional.

Oh, it will have maybe a rolling bleacher,

like a small bleacher.

Like a picture of Lily bleacher. It won't have seating for hundreds or anything.

I can bring chairs. Additional bus parking.

We have a unique circumstance. We do like, we do door-to-door service for students

for special education busing.

And we do curbside service. So we extended that curbside service to make sure

we can fit on our special education buses.

Knowing that they might likely go to both schools again. So it will increase space. We also have a lot of buses here because of 45 square miles. So when I told them how many bus spots we need, they were like, for 600 kid elementary,

I'm a kid, I love buses.

So we increased bus parking because I just know that's, when you have the extra bus that's sitting on the curb on the blinkers waiting because there's not a space.

It's really hard.

So we increased the bus parking a bit. And also added some staff parking out there with the buses as well.

The warming kitchen. As former high school principal,

having a kitchen that you cannot legally make a sandwich in and sell it is just really limiting. And having to cook your site, your food somewhere else and bring it leads to kids opening up plastic packages to get to their food. So I said, please, please increase the cost and make them a hybrid kitchen that we can cook our kids in.

Yes. Next generator.

So like it's a full production kitchen.

It is. Yes, it is. We can do everything.

It's a full production. Not the size of the middle school central kitchen, but they can cook all their own food in that space.

Okay. Yeah.

So that will also be an increase in equipment, equipment costs because we're going to do that.

So is that a, sorry,

does that increase of $200,000 include the equipment costs?

Yeah. Because the equipment's part of that. Oh, okay.

Part of the whole budget.

Yeah.

I thought that the middle school kitchen wasn't large enough to be the whole.

We split it right now between OES and the middle school.

Okay. Both prepared.

And this will then be the replacement for OES.

Yeah.

They can cook for themselves. And then the high school will take over the OES kitchen so they can cook for themselves.

Okay. All right.

Because I remember Cassie giving us the whole thing about the kitchen rundown and storage.

Tarmigan will be the last place they can prepare all their own meals.

Okay.

That scratch-based cooking initiative. We're much better suited. But neither facility can be a sole central kitchen, but now you've increased your square footage of where we can prepare, which is going to be an amazing step forward until bond number two.

Okay.

And storage also because she talked about that there was no food storage.

Both dry and cold storage.

Okay. Great. Great.

Remember because we wanted to solve as many problems with-

Correct. Okay.

So, Cassie designed the entire kitchen. The food storage.

Great. Generator.

We don't currently have a generator. We have one small portable generator that we use with our power outages. Also for the city, just having a place. We've always been interested in the schools as being able to provide an emergency services to go, we have a place that has power. So, we've decided moving forward, we're going to try to do that. If we have an emergency situation in our schools, we can send all the kids to one central school. If power's out and we've got to wait for parents, we have a place that we don't get enough power on. So, we added a generator for this one.

And that will also provide us, like, well, we didn't have any communication because of power outage, the last one where we couldn't-

Yeah.

We've added Starlink to all of our buildings now. So, we know power will not stop us from having communication anymore.

But this definitely does add to that capacity.

Okay.

And we'll probably put the bus repeater on it.

So that the bus repeater will always take power. Okay.

It is important to note that the generator does those things, but it doesn't do everything.

Oh, yeah. It doesn't do all those things. Emergency. Yes. Lifesong, you can get water and keep the freezer going. Basic, basic, yeah. Yeah. Yes.

But I've been in an elementary school when they had no power and, you know, there are no windows in those bathrooms.

Yes.

But I believe the children still have to go to the bathroom.

We will have all the emergency lights and all that when they power by the generator.

We'll have a discussion with the electrical folks.

There's an emergency light in the bathroom.

Yeah.

Which ones are on, which ones are off. And then all of that, you have a stormwater design increase. So every time you increase anything that's dirty, turf makes water dirty, it has to be cleaned and stored. Increasing the pavement, that all has to, that water is maintained. So that was a $200,000 increase just when you make that bigger footprint, not promote ground and things that make the rainwater dirty.

You have to clean it.

So that's an overall increase of $200,000 for those increases.

Did we get a direct pipe to the sewer treatment plant?

Well, to the sewer treatment plant, yes.

It actually cuts through the Chen property diagonally.

The main sewer goes right through our property. The rest of the sewage through...

The rest of the sewage through... We're supposed to back up a high school property and all the way down. So it's already on our property.

So yeah, convenient exit.

Well, they give us a discount on our suit.

We're getting a lot of local hookups in the city. That's a good money statement. Yeah.

So those are all just, I want to publicly say, those are all added to the scope. All still within the budget, especially with this increase in state match that we could feel pretty confident that we can deliver all these things.

Don't seem like a great idea.

Thank you.

Can we accurately say that the additions are a result of the increase in state match? Can we, because if I'm a community member and you told me this job's going to cost $137 million, and then we went ahead and squeezed in a bunch of stuff, they're going to be like, well, you asked for more than you needed then.

We absolutely could not add these things without an additional state match.

We could not afford any of these things.

I just want to be clear on that story.

But we can, we can publish that out to the community.

We can send it to the community that state matches what is giving us.

Is allowing us to do.

I'll tell you, transparently, I'm very confident to say, state match allowed us to add these ads to make a healthy contingency pot for all portions of our project. And the last thing is that parity across the district when we talk about, we want to make sure that we equalize things across the district.

That's the other thing about us to do.

That was beginning, if the first price point was that we'd like to, if we can, should be turning more into, we know we can, we'll find out how much we can equalize.

That's the increase of state dollars allowed us to be.

Because that was also one of the really hard decisions for the committee when we were talking about upgrades for the other buildings.

That was a real hard decision.

And I've also been having a conversation of, we will not let go, there's also a possibility, and we have a belief that if we end at the end with extra dollars, that we should not sell those bonds and maybe return those to the taxpayers.

Yes, yes, 100%.

If state match, and our general fund, or our impact fees allows us to do that.

Any more questions on the overall budgets? And I think we're going to pivot a little bit and focus, kind of dive into some detail on the elementries

and picture, big budget questions.

So we're just going to talk a little bit about the elementary school in detail, our estimate process, kind of how we've rolled up our sleeves and been working as a team to get to a point where we can be here and say we're on budget and we're having these things and kind of have a success story. So I'm going to focus a little bit on the delta between where we were with the SD set, so the schematic design, and where we've gotten with the last set of drawings, so design development. I think I can say, if everybody recalls, but a handful of months ago, the SD set, we were priced out at $114 million. We now have that down to $109, and a lot of that's been working through a pretty rigorous process that we call value analysis, or some people say value engineering. But it's really working with our design partners, the district, to find ways that we can creatively save money without really impacting the program. I think one of the things I appreciate about Ed is that he's reinforcing everybody's promises made will certainly be kept. And so how do you get a project to fit within that budget and still deliver on those promises? And that's really what we've been working towards. So if we go down kind of the list, and I'll preface this with we have spreadsheets for everything. I've tried my best to not make everything a spreadsheet, so there are no bad questions. You can ask about any number. We can dive into it. But construction costs, you can see the savings of $5 million. So that's $5 million of direct savings straight from kind of bottom line construction. And the next slide will talk a little bit about that. You can see a pretty big increase to the road to White Hawk. Part of that was just a schematic design. You know, it was trying to understand what that road really was, right? Curb, debtor, asphalt sidewalks, right? Everything starts to add a little bit of cost. And then again, escalating it out to 2030 and also focusing on, hey, this won't be our civil partners on-site, burn and turn, competitive price. It's going to be a separate kind of procurement process. So let's increase that, make sure we're covered in the event that we get to that point. Contractor contingencies and design contingencies, I want to touch on just a little bit because there's a pretty good difference. The contractor contingency will follow us into construction. It's there to be used for, you know, issues within documents, issues within our bid packages, kind of items that we can take care of without having to come to the school board for a change order.

It's mine to use.

And I think we really look at it as just a separate bucket. You know, it's all Ed and Cliff's bucket, right?

It's Oregon School District's bucket. It's just how do we manage it.

But design contingency is a bit different. So this is a contingency that's going to, it basically slowly goes down. So when we get the next set of drawings, we'll be at construction document level. Our design contingency is going to be, you know, basically nothing. And that's because we'll have a drawing set that we can really put true numbers to. It's also an estimating contingency. So it's a little bit of, you know, how much sub-input have we got? How true are our numbers? And like what type of fluctuations we'll see when we actually go to the bid market? So just a clarification there that at the end of the day, when we bring you all the GMP, you're not going to see a design contingency. It's just going to be, here's the GMP value, within that has our fee, GCs, and the contractor contingency. Or what I call a MAC contingency. So it's contingency on our overall construction cost.

Sales tax, I don't know. It's just a big name. It gets a scratch in your head.

And then all the same kind of soft costs that Liz had talked about. But I think it is nice to be at this stage in the project where you can see those soft costs and owner contingencies creeping up. That's a positive sign that creates more cushion, puts us in a really great spot. I also think these projects are unique in that we're going to be building the elementary school while we're buying out the high school. And so we're going to get this really awesome level of cost certainty. And then we can really start to look at those contingencies, look at how the bond sales are going, and really have a pretty good understanding as we start to shift away from risk. So it's going to be a fun build for us. We kind of geek out over that type of stuff.

I think we dive a little deeper into some of the contingencies in a couple slides. But the objective is we want to be really thoughtful with where we set that level now during estimating. Because effectively, what we don't use gets returned back. And so you really don't benefit if we are overly protective of that. And in return, we've got money at the end. And then, gosh, I couldn't figure out how to spend $2 million now when we weren't anticipating. So we're constantly monitoring that from now all the way through construction and say, are we at a point where the risks are less than the contingency we're holding? And we start to return that back over time and look at really maximizing what you can get while we're still there.

Some things get more expensive, right, as the construction project goes on, too. So if we know we have a certain amount of contingency and there's something we want to add in the project, let's do it while it's affordable, right?

Let's not wait until the end. And it's just our job, right? How do we manage it?

So if we go to the next slide, it's kind of focusing in on that $5 million. You know, one of the questions I always expect people to ask is like, well, $5 million? Did you just cut out all the, you know, nice things in our school? And that's not the case. So we did this really high-level kind of breakdown of what that was. And you can see that the biggest portion is actually in site earthwork and utilities. So when we came on board, one of the things that we really started to dig into was the site stormwater plan, the grading, how can we really kind of attack this? Save dollars with stuff that you ultimately don't see, right? Most people don't care about what their stormwater pipe looks like because it's in the ground. As long as it serves a purpose, you know, great. And so we were able to shave right around $3 million just on kind of heavy civil items. So what I would say is stuff you really never see. And kudos to Matt, too. He's an architect, but he was really a push for us working with his civil engineer and really kind of driving that needle and asking the hard questions. Like, well, prove it.

Why not? Why can't we? Why can we?

And so this is how it's still what we düş people who mache up with, and I always appreciate that about good designers. Now there were a number of architectural items that we-we right-sized, right? So it's not stripping things out of a project, but it's right-sizing it for a building. So it's everything from different finishes to soft-nut material and really kind of finding

the right components.

Another piece of it is just finding the right material. It's a weird market right now. Things fluctuate, things change. People would ask me four years ago, I would have said, oh, metal panel. it's so affordable and brick is so expensive and now they're like the same price

or it flipped

and so it's just our ability to work with NAC and the design partners and say okay here's what we're seeing for true pricing forecast out to the start date let's find the right product choices and really kind of make sure we're getting the best value for the district and then just some other things so a little bit of electrical cost savings some landscape and a little bit of structural but again all in all good savings through the first value

analysis process

we'll do it again on the next set of drawings we get and kind of continue to work that throughout construction probably can go to the next one

yeah yeah yeah

so again simplified with a pie chart but we go through this process and it's a spreadsheet that gets pretty lengthy but basically each item is an idea right so we said hey no bad idea so we put all the ideas on the table we then work with NAC to come up with what that design what that idea means from a design perspective so that my pre-con estimating team can put true numbers to it ultimately then Cliff and Liz work with us to approve or reject certain things not every idea is a good one so some things get rejected some things get approved and ultimately that's how we get to that kind of bottom line savings keep going because I can't read that graphical I just sometimes you're talking like now what are you really talking about so one of the big savings we had probably 1.5 million dollars was just storm water and I don't want to oversimplify it but the initial design had some really large pipes that was our kind of major detention was large pipes and so we changed to a storm check chamber system which is those little yellow domes and on this project they'll be larger than that deeper but that's the difference

so just where are those under me?

yeah so there's going to be two large large portions

maybe three

one's under parking and one's under the field

so we won't have the great big hole in the ground

and the reality and I don't know if I should say this but they really will never fill all the way up but you have to size your storm system for that 10 year under your event

and that's why they get so large

I mean just details like those big pipes I was talking about you can fit two or three on a truck and you're going to have to take hundreds of trucks to bring them in so having a different material that can stack differently you can get more lineal foot out of different material

and it pairs pretty well too with one of the items like I said that Matt was really working on which is balancing the site so we take kind of the overall site plan and we work on balancing it so in that graphic image to the everybody's left I think blue shows a fill, red shows a cut and so the goal of the project is how do we balance it how do we keep our soils on site not pay the diesel and get the dirt off the site and kind of make things work and part of that is how you change some of your systems so by changing a storm system getting rid of some of the excavation with those larger pipes creating these half domes where you can get better containment for a smaller footprint

helps all that

so just kind of creative ideas and trying to put a picture to a glue smut sheet

next slide before we move on

anything else on the process of

kind of the budgeting okay the Curtis goes for every single blueprint by paper early in the morning

and down to the point

if it's doesn't matter if it's $20,000 it'd be like you know if they just

change those whiteboards by one foot you could save this many dollars

and I check that he's very thorough in his safe industry

yeah he's been awesome to work with

I think he's going to be a huge advocate when we're out there building

but things like roofing he's giving us the right roofing products that the district wants to see and that the district's used to maintaining and then how do we work out of the project so having people like him

are invaluable

huge asset

so the value engineering

that phase is now complete

or does that continue a little bit more

yeah it continues it's officially complete according to OSPI it's officially complete you'll eventually get a report that'll go to you

then that's required by OSPI for our state

but unofficially

we continue doing it throughout until we get to bid time

oh okay cool so if somebody comes up with another good idea there's still an opportunity what I hear even during construction every time you go you know

we don't necessarily need to do this we can just save those dollars

or I've found sometimes subcontractors have another product that sometimes meets the architect's needs and it's easier to build you know more available and easier to prepare okay cool yeah there's times too

where we bring on our trade partners

right

we bring on subcontractors you get a fresh set of eyes

all of a sudden there's different ideas

I have a project right now where we save a half a million dollars

on landscaping

just by changing a few different products

and removing some things that were unnecessary

and what we did and when I started doing our projects

is we create an owner-controlled fund so it's basically

another owner contingency

within the contract so that if there's changes Cliff again doesn't have to come present some

you know elaborate changes

just an easy way to use project contingency so that works out well

okay we've talked about some of this before

so I'll be pretty quick here so we can lose as much time for discussion but on both schools we've been going through the estimating process

they're not exactly in alignment so we've been hearing a lot

about the design development

estimate for the elementary

we're currently just starting

that same thing

for the high school so we'll be going through

that next step

for the high school and you can see here the value analysis

that's been done

as well on the high school so we've incorporated those and now we'll be picking that up in this next estimate that's happening

and just real quick you can run through this Kyle

but we have just a couple quick slides we weren't intending to go through every line item but just to give you a little feeling

for how the structure

of the estimate is

yeah I think it's just showing some of the I don't know detailed level of effort so we do full takeoff

on every drawing so we get we roll it all up

into basically like the standard spec

breakouts so that we can see square foot costs

and also allows our company

to benchmark it against other projects that are similar to make sure that we're right sizing

certain design elements and ensuring again

that we remember getting the right value and the right programmatic needs yeah I probably don't need to dive into much but again just kind of showing an example because obviously there's a lot

of detail that is behind us

and all those branches that we have

so and that's what we're

sharing with your third party this is helpful every once in a while

you get a community member who wants the details

and the proof

so it's nice to know

what's available what's conveying elevators

there's a few other things

that people put in conveying space

you can keep scooting back

and part of the thing

just you see that there's the second column

from the left

is the cost per square foot and when Kyle mentioned

benchmarking that's one of the things we look at

so that helps us

just get like oh this category

seems yeah

we're in the range we have really high ceilings our ceilings are really why are ceilings expensive

because we dug into why the ceilings are so expensive

in this building and that was some of the savings

is just kind of making sure the ceilings

we have the right thing for the department

twice just in the next one and Matt touched on it

and we're actually so Skanska's doing a full-blown estimate and then we also have a third party which is

it's like a check and balance

and so we go through a process

that we call reconciliation

so we

they do their estimate

we do our estimate

and then we find out

where the deltas are

make sure that everybody's

seeing the building the same way and talk about any discrepancies

your roofing cost is 30% higher than ours

how are you getting that data

what's driving the cost

and we can work through everything

but what it does

is it gives us

a really strong level

of cost certainty and things aren't always going to be the exact same thing you know we're going to dig in our deals a little bit and say hey we have some really good market input that's telling us that this number should be where it's at and see

it's never perfect but it's a really good

check and balance to make sure that we have cost confidence

before we go into bid

and you can see at the time we did this

there's a 2 million delta

on the far right on the bottom

between what our estimator

did and what Kyle and Margo and their team did

and so that was

the starting point

of our reconciliation

process like okay

why is there a 2 million delta

here let's sort that out

and so we kind of did that and in the end

we didn't agree on every little line but we got actually very very close so the delta was very small by the time

we finished that process

we have fun with another spreadsheet but also just part of our estimate package

so big conversation

is always around

contingency and escalation this particular clip is about contingency so it's looking at

different design

contingency percentages for each scope

again we're not going

to throw standard numbers

on an entire project we really want to

dive into each component talk about the level of detail in the drawings talk about the level

of info we've gotten from our trade partners and really kind of dial that number in

so if we go back

you know 10 slides when I was talking about there's a design contingency that slowly gets whittled down that's what's happening here we're slowly whittling it down and you can see that some things are more refined than others you know asphalt there's not going to be a lot of change with asphalt so we're already down to 3% and then there's some other elements that are still being designed

miscellaneous specialties

you know

we do a similar thing with escalation

you're asking if that really is the escalation rate so we do

the same chart

exists instead of that column saying contingency

it'll say escalation and we go look at

the market and see what each one of those

kind of line items

is doing so we don't want to just butter

across an escalation

rate because it's different depending on the material that you're talking about

so that is what

we're doing

when we're taking

a long time to put an estimate together we're doing a lot of that research and being sure that we're right

sizing our escalation

rates

and the contingencies

that we're holding and then doing it's an estimate not an exactimate but we get as close as we can and to Margo's point she made earlier where she was talking about we don't want to hold too much here right

because we want

to just have the right amount because in the end we don't want to be like oh wow this is showing we're over budget or something like to make changes we want to just be as accurate as we can so we had negotiation around this so this wasn't the starting point this was the ending point here and that was

the natural thing

that we do as a team to kind of make sure we're all comfortable with the board yeah that's really key because we don't know

what's in Matt's

head still or that he knows he hasn't put on paper yet but he knows he's got a lot so it's really important to have that collaboration and say how much do you still need to put in here right if we could just get in and that's it we don't want that but like on some of those items if I'm you know saying I think the number could be lower then Kyle's response as well you better really manage your drawing set to that and make sure that you're managing to that number so those are kind of the back and forth and so how we work as a team

to stay on top

yeah this slide is really

kind of a graphical

representation of another fun spreadsheet that I have

which is a risk

matrix

so the contractor

contingency that we'll carry into construction

again our team

takes it a little maybe further than most

and we go through

the entire project and say where does the risk currently lie and how can we

allocate that contingency

and that does a few things for us it helps my team focus on how we write strong bid packages and how do we

mitigate contingency

usage through the procurement process but it also helps us to allocate those funds to certain milestones in the project so what this is showing is that a good portion of our up front contingency

is on basically

getting out of the ground and then getting the building in the dry and once we're through that if we still have a healthy contingency that's where we can start talking about okay what changes or nice stats can we include in this building while we still allocate some of our contingency to it avoid change orders and just work within our GMP so that's really our goal and we'll do that for our side of the ledger I do it for the owner side of the ledger too and we're really trying to think about every risk that's out there for a project so that we have a really dialed

in kind of viewpoint

like right now we're showing that we have a $2 million contingency budget

I have 1.8

that I've allocated which means

I'm already planning

I'm giving back $245,000 at what point we give that back that's kind of up to the project team as we start construction I think that might be the last of sort of the budget estimated pieces maybe we pause for a minute here we have a lot of different numbers lots of different stuff there conversation questions comments and concerns I have a question and I'm

confident that I'm

getting the cart in front of the horse landscaping was a line item on one of those questions and we've talked a lot about well we've talked a lot about

the Taj Mahal

yard with the pond and the bridge in the design that was a poor gene yeah it was a lot

it prompted a lot

of discussion with the community and then we've talked about like outdoor learning space would be amazing for our students and so I'm just curious like when does that kind of discussion do we just wait and see what we have at the end to the bush and tree tech we've had those discussions Curtis in particular is digging into is that exact so landscape in particular we said is this the minimum because the city does have standards you need this many trees this many bushes the city has a standard for when you're facing here when you're on the edge this is what so we have to meet those minimums

so we have asked

many times and got confirmation

is this the minimum

we would like to know when we're above the minimum we've talked about tree species we have neighbors we don't want to lose necessarily if they don't have to can you get a shorter tree species

so we've had a lot

of landscaping decisions

even now to me

and Curtis talking about we noticed in the plant that there's eight inches of fill I don't even have eight inches or eight inches tops out of my house can you turn that to four so yeah we're definitely with landscaping

we've asked

and we'll continue to push into

is this the minimum

amount of landscaping and also the minimum amount of upkeep

so we don't want

a bunch of natural grasses that are mixing with weeds and so Curtis is definitely in the weeds in the landscaping and there are still some really nice spaces right there's like kind of those natural courtyards that'll be really great we've left the courtyards kind of in blank canvases right now instead of making them guessing what might need space and adding logs and rocks and really neat spaces why don't we just hold off and be over furnished over installed on that and we'll look at installing benches and tables after the fact with teacher and principal input and more of an open canvas with your

concrete asphalt

your grass out there but short of that we haven't really added anything into those outdoor learning spaces so we have opportunity to hold the dollars at the end and go what do we want to put out there I just don't want to be excited of some of those ideas and native plants rules and plant types and native vegetation scotch room everywhere when it comes to like the foundation where you can actually get to the point where you build I saw a line item that said aggregate peers and are we doing have we decided we're just moving forward with that or is there going to be another GCCM like direct hire kind of process or where are we out with what's been decided there someone that they recommended in multiple firms and then we contract directly to have them pay a general price so and then we've also hired an additional engineer that has looked at all options so I think I wanted to clarify that there's been two district consultants because we want to be thorough in the decision making what was recommended if you were to build this job one what would you do and two how much you can charge and just pay for that service to go we want to get a real world someone

with geoengineers

on so they're doing an early peer bid foundation package I would say that's for a permit that we're working with the city on and submit that yeah I think it's first to know about I can't believe I'm only pausing so I'm like that is soon yeah part of it was just trying to get best value right so

as we

really worked through the design process and kind of got through what the risk was with that particular site the decision best value was to go to the market get so there's a point that we shifted and wanted to ensure that that was the right decision of the type of design and we shifted to not do the alternate sub package so that's a long answer I and part of the reason we were considering that before was if we were going to have multiple options for the type of peers we were going to do then it might have made sense to go ahead and have a selection process for based on that and maybe someone who has diverse expertise there but it became clear as we did more analysis there's really only one smart solution there and so once you're there then you can hire a specialty engineer to get a permit and bid it out just like we're bidding out the rest of the project so that's why we natural natural gas right that Seattle is doing whatever on that side are we down in here going to fall into to to to to to to So currently,

there are allowances in the code to utilize natural gas. We're taking advantage of those. We are utilizing natural gas at the elementary school. So we'll be bringing in gas and using that for heating and cooling equipment as well as for kitchen equipment. I think that's pretty much it. And so there are some things that you need to do to offset that a little bit. But in terms of my memory, and I need to double check this, is that I think the photovoltaic panels on the roof is a portion of our offset. And it's an increased amount to what we might have had to do otherwise. It's a code requirement regardless.

Gas boilers are so true to you. It's tough to lose. In the last two schools I opened, we had these wild heat pumps that I fought for like 12 months after. It, you know, power starts coming from a transformer, which nobody has control over, and how do you deal with that, right?

It was fun talking to the HVAC people, because we move back a lot towards more conventional heating and cooling system. We're used to. We decided not, especially with the ground that we live on here, to not go hundreds of feet into the ground for geothermal. That has a small advantage and does give you a little bit of free heat, but there's a lot of problems with those loops that you put into the ground, and eventually you end up cutting them out as they leak. And so we really made the decision to push towards more of a conventional model, one that our, knowing that we have a small maintenance staff, we don't have to call out specialized teams to work on them. We know how natural gas heats up water and heats the system, so we went with more conventional.

Good decision making.

Well, just, Warren, I hope you see the value of bringing a contractor on early through the GCCM, and rather than getting all these surprises down the road, you're able to work collaboratively up front and minimize your exposure down the road. So we're very fortunate to have amazing partners, so hope you see the value.

Oh, after middle school, and now I'm like, wow, this is amazing. This is completely different, and it's fantastic. I'm like, all the information, I'm so appreciative of you guys working on this as far as delivering what the community wants.

That's huge. I'm just impressed. I'm just blown away by this whole thing. It's great. Schedule? Speaking of being blown away, let's see what we can do here. Go through the schedule.

Okay, I'll just say real quick, this is the same as what you've seen multiple times.

So, just gonna highlight on the very bottom, as we've been saying, we're exploring the potential for that 2028 school opening date. And, basically, Skanska is moving forward, you know, kind of basing their plans on that.

So, just like we talked previously.

And, same story for the high school, is that our plan, we're hoping to just sequence that. So, it's after the elementary students are moving into their new building, and then we're starting construction. So, no changes to what we've been getting previously about that.

So, again, just kind of diving into the elementary school in more detail, because that's the first one up. We want to start by talking about procurement, so our bid schedule and what that looks like from an overview. So, we're gonna have roughly 28 packages going down to the street for competitive bidding. We've broken it into phases, and part of that's how we can get the stuff we need early, to start early. And then you can give the design team a little more time to make sure we have 100% documents, people we bid finishes, and some of those envelope components. Again, just with the idea of reducing risk for change orders. So, the first group's gonna go out in January. We'll be hosting the local outreach event. We're already doing a bunch of virtual bid sessions. We brought these and kind of see how we advertise them. We'll pass them down. And then ultimately, we'll be opening bids in March. So, that means we'll have the first GMP amendment or minimac, a bunch of different terms, likely ready for the board towards the end of March. We'll have to sort through what that board meeting looks like.

The two key bid dates that come to the board is March.

Because we also need to get that authorization to proceed.

And then we're targeting in May.

Then phase two will be basically put the bid packages out on the street in March. Again, this is mostly your finishes. So, your envelope, your interior finishes. But by April 9th, we'll have the project 100% bid out, 100% cost certainty on the elementary school. And yeah, we'll be pushing forward with construction.

If we go to the next slide.

So, at some point, because these bid packages, we think, we talk about we're exploring a date of opening. At some point, when you tell folks, hey, I want you to bid on this package and I want you to build this. And I want to build this timeframe. And you didn't cost it for this timeframe. At some point, it's no longer exploration. And that's really around these bid packages where you can't obviously say we're exploring anymore. No, we're having people price it and actually build it to that.

So, the closer we get to the bid packages,

you'll see language change from exploring to know we are building. And we're getting closer and closer to that.

And actually, before we move on, I think this is – I'm a few slides light, so I brought some handouts. But one of the things that we've been working with the district pretty heavy on is how do we – we really kind of pump dollars into the local economy. And so, one of our big focuses has been on bid packages, so subcontractors, suppliers, what does that look like.

And so,

my team, Margo, myself, Katie, we've been creating basically a bid Patrick matrix that shows all those local companies and how we could potentially head some pretty strong goals. But there's a few other kind of legs to that pillar. One is local labor. And so, we've created kind of a tracking sheet that's going to help us understand what our local labor is on site. We'll use it with our subcontractors. I accidentally printed the one out that two of my employees have already signed. It was like, I don't know, but it is what it is. But the idea behind it is that if you have local labor on a project, their salary is contributing to this local economy, so you're keeping those bond dollars at home. This is, I think, a labor foreman and a superintendent that we have that live within the zip codes that Cliff gave us. So, I mean, right there you're talking about a really good chunk of money.

It was fun for us.

We took the zip codes Cliff gave us, and we have 24 employees. Most of them are awesome.

It was funny.

I sent it to our soups. I say most because I don't know all of them. I sent it to our superintendents.

I copied our general superintendent on. He came over and said, Kyle, you don't get all those people. And I'm like, whoa, no, I don't. Calm down. I just need a few. It's going to be okay.

But it's a really nice way of tracking local labor without actually having a PLA. We'll use it with all of our subcontractors and really build it back into it. Third piece of that leg, apologies. This is Sumner. And I know there's probably hard burn with Sumner.

They're boring now.

We don't play against them.

Yeah.

So we started with this concept probably a year and a half ago about really trying to pump money in the local economy. I mean, so we started with this idea of a passport. And it's how do we get local businesses in front of every employee on site. At our peak, we'll have 100 plus project managers or guys that come out. What I will say is that Sumner is kind of like our guinea pig. We like to raise the bar with every project. So we're taking their lessons learned. And one of the things was that the passport became somewhat challenging for local businesses. And so where they got to was kind of these fun little punch cards. So they've been having their employees bring in receipts for every $10. They get a stamp on this. When the ticket's filled out, $100 goes in a hat. And they've been having bi-monthly raffles for prizes. And they're literally seeing thousands of dollars of local spend. And I think a lot of that would be happening anyways. But this is a great way to track it. And it's a great way to tell the bond story for the next bond. So it's kind of another thing we're going to be doing. So I picture our job trailer with these kind of posters of all the local businesses. Katie and her team's already reached out to the ordering business administration. So we're trying to kind of gather that information. And then when folks go through orientation, they get their first punch card. And it really helps to try to incentivize that.

So they'd be having the little cards instead of the bigger passport.

I think so. We're open to feedback. Yeah, we're open to feedback. I like passport. I think passport looks good. I had a great story today. I was at Big J's. And I bumped into one of my former students.

And he was like, hey, school, you know, kind of, I don't know how to work right now.

Do you have a job? You know, he's kind of, yeah, I get that a lot, right? You've got to go from work. And I was like, well, what are you doing? He was on the glazer. What was that again? He goes, windows. I was like, oh. I was like, well, we're going to school.

And one of them has, you know, almost all glass on one side.

And we have lots of windows in the elementary school. And he's like, are you kidding me? I said, no. And so he goes, oh my gosh. So he was super excited.

The chance of him as a union glazer that he could get on here. I said, no, we're definitely pushing for our builder to look for local labor.

So he's like, I'm going to go home to my wife. He was all excited. You know. That's great. That's great. Yeah, it's fun.

It's definitely have fun with you. You know, so many of our craft employees and superintendents that love it. One of the fun things, too, is when you have a foreman from the area, right, then they instantly want to bring on a local apprentice. And they're already talking. I have a raising gang. He's hanging a structural steel building for me right now.

I'm like, oh, our entire gang lives down in the area.

So it's just, I don't know, it's fun for us to see.

It's cool.

The other piece of that is that I think Cliff's already working with the high school principal. And probably around June, July, we'll be looking at bringing on preferred entry apprentices. It's just a creative way to get folks who are directly coming out of school into the unions working on a project in their backyard. We often see one of the challenges with apprentices is they go to the hall and their first call is, you know, Everett.

And they live in Elm. Oh, my gosh, what do I do?

So then we can put people in their community building something they have pride in. I think the success there is a higher outcome. Sorry, I'm talking fast. I know we're going out of time. This is our schedule we're tracking towards. So this looks a little bit different than what Matt had, but these are kind of some of our key milestones. The bars or the GANs just represent kind of large chunks. So foundations and structure and then ultimately dry in. But what you can see is that we're targeting to start somewhere in April, May timeframe. We're going to be wrapping up our ground improvements or aggregate peers right around the middle of July. Built a handful of elementary schools and I topped out every single one of them in October. So we're going to be targeting October again.

Go figure.

And then we had a really good old-time superintendent that his thing is, you know, you get the building dried in, you finish in six months every time. So that's kind of how these milestones track. Getting a TCO in July, ultimately working with the district to get furniture in the building, and then hitting our substantial completion in August. What that means for ribbon cutting and turnover is still to be determined, but this is what we're tracking to as a team.

Next slide. Unless there's questions. Do we have a hard stop at 7.15? No. Not firm, no. I can talk really fast. What else? You'll start falling asleep. Okay.

So another fun one, and I think something that this group can really help us with, is how do we look at that schedule and kind of those milestones through the journey of students. I think construction on sites can do two things, right? It can be a hindrance or it can really improve and kind of bolster the academic learning environment, and so we choose the latter. So these are just all the different ways that we plan to get involved in the school currently, and again, we're looking for more ways. So college career fair, actually, I'll be back down here tomorrow at 7. Maybe I'll show up at 8, but Doug and Derek and Katie, they're all planning to set up,

and I'll roll in whenever we're ready. Derek's going to be there? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Groundbreaking ceremony, so again, sometime in April, great time to get excited. I already got Katie looking for little, you know, plastic hard hats for all the kiddos, so we can really boost the morale there. Again, we have that preferred entry hiring date. Topping out ceremony, something we always like to celebrate. Again, we're a big union company, so we try to do that big. So we'll have the Christmas tree if the district lets us. It'll be a live tree that we can plant on site.

Oh, cool.

Another college career fair.

How do you explain the Christmas tree, what that is?

It's hard to explain.

It goes back to kind of like Nordic days, and it's your highest point in the building, brings good virtue to the building and everything that's in it.

So we put a tree on the final piece of steel, and it gets lifted into place.

Oh, no. Oh, well. The district won't let them, right? Yeah. Yeah. Whatever you want up there. Yeah. Tree. Tree. American flag. Beam signing.

We have my iron workers put the beam slightly elevated so we can all take a picture in front

of it. It's really kind of fun. That's cool.

But also it's a fun way to get students involved, which I think there's probably a picture. One of the things that I really want to hit home is that job site learning.

That's so cute.

So just examples of what it looks like, right? Groundbreaking with little kiddos.

Mm-hmm.

The beams you see dangling in the air are the same beams that those kids are signing. So we built saw horses, trucked them over to the school, got them all signed, and then took a fun video, sent it to them so that they could play it in their assembly and see their beams flying into the air. So it was a pretty fun environment.

Wow.

I tell you, those kids were signing that beam everywhere. We got our saw horses back and they were all signed. Again, building the excitement I think is important and the kids bringing the excitement onto their families, right, and that kind of builds their community, so.

And the school board signed the beam too.

Yep. All right. There you are again. Yeah. We worked hard. Yeah. Well done. Yeah. Building it's easy. If you go to the next one, go ahead.

Some of those things like that, they, the schools will know ahead of time. I mean, quite a bit ahead. I mean, because some of those things I was thinking, oh, that'd be great, you know, like math lessons or geometry lessons or, you know.

Yeah.

Margo's taught a few geometry lessons.

Yeah.

We just hit my, like, love language with a train of thought.

I mean, you're not so good at math. Yeah.

Well, that's one of the student engagement things we can do. And, of course, it depends on how much you want us to get involved. But, yeah, we've gone in and taught high school math and geometry classes using, we were at the time we had a bunch of unsuitable soil digging a big hole right outside of an occupied high school. And we went in and said, why don't we use this as a lesson to calculate volume? And so we did a bunch of volume calculations. We ultimately made them kind of compete and put trucking numbers together. And it was, you know, it was perfectly timed. The teacher was like, yeah, we're just learning how to do volumes of pyramids and cylinders.

Great.

So we put a little lesson together for us. And you can do it that way. And then for smaller, younger kids, there's different little math lessons that you can do.

I love that. And I have to tell you a story. My son, my youngest son, in high school, said, Mom, why do I have to take geometry and never use it? Yes, you do. And guess what?

He went to work for a concrete company and he used jobs every single day.

Human yards, all of them.

So I taught second grade. And when we had geometry, we had to learn about right angles, okay? And so we had all these little squares and they had to go around the room to find right angles. And then we talked about, now what would happen if that shelf didn't have all those right angles? And they started seeing, oh, oh, the door has to have all those, you know, because then they could see the geometry was built into the building. And they really, really, really get excited. That's why I was asking about that.

That's one of the most exciting things, sitting on the committee when we went through all this part, was this engagement part. It was really exciting for me to listen to the ideas that you all have and how that's going to engage our students. And it makes it pretty exciting to know that we're going to have children on site while you're doing all this work. And it's going to be in their, you know, it is their yard that they're going to be learning on.

And I think that's super beneficial. They have ownership in their building. Yeah.

And real world learning.

Yes.

Which is just light bulbs.

Yeah.

And we are completely flexible. We have a lot of ideas, a lot of things we've done in the past, but every district's different. Every district has different priorities and courses and we can right size and kind of do the work.

All of our math classes are currently in portables in the parking lot. What are the parking steps?

This is, I think, my last slide. But one of the items I had on there for student engagement is a student learning opportunity. And I think over the course of this project, we have a great opportunity to do it twice, two years back to back, one at the elementary school and one at the high school. But what we do is we try to find a time in the building starting to be dried in that we can basically take the classrooms and set up learning stations. So up here we have drywall. We also have like our 3D Navis work stuff so people can see the technology side. It would be awesome if we get an act partner with us so they can show off Revit. And really it's trying to show that, you know, not just trades, but like within the built environment, there is tons of opportunity. And so our job is really just to help exposure. Maybe get somebody excited and have them ask some questions. And maybe that stems into a career in the trades or in construction management or design. And so that's always a really fun day. I've had some contractors tell me it was like the funnest day on the job. So that one I'm like, oh, what about the other 3D? So a lot of fun stuff there.

That's very cool. Yeah.

And again, if we have a lot of local labor on site, what a better opportunity for people to teach, you know, where they would attend.

There's my dad or my uncle over here. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what we have, unless there's questions.

At the middle school, I walked in over there and there was a masonry guy.

And I looked at him, I'm like, man, you look familiar. I'll walk over to him, sure enough, he was a guy that I met my husband and played baseball with. Right?

So it's like, that was kind of cool to see him on our building, working on our building.

Yeah.

It's a small industry, I would say. A good portion of the Craftwood lives south of Seattle.

Mm-hm. So it'll be nice to see some of them.

Any opportunity. It still blows my mind how, if you're in our school ecosystem, or district ecosystem, and you get to see all the social media, and you get to see the news. And there's so much of our community who's not in that ecosystem. So there's something we can do, you know, like Project Career Day. Make it a sign you can read at 35 miles an hour going down 162.

You know.

It doesn't have to say a lot. It just has to say it's happening.

Mm-hm.

And even people passing through, we've got a lot of pass-through traffic that they're completely out of our communication channels. They're not even on the blogger, maybe.

Mm-hm.

And then we reshape our logistics of how do we revamp the communication, the stories that we tell, the involvement of families and community. You can't just start digging ground without some groundwork to lay and bring people on

board.

So just like we've been a little bit shy in communicating the design work before the city

gives us the go-ahead. Yeah.

Similarly, we're on hold with a few things, but we think after we get through the holidays, particularly if this timeline holds, there's a whole lot of work that will be happening around the communication, the involvement. We have a lot of stories to tell. So as Brittany and I think about the videos and how we ramp it up, spring takes a dominant focus in this space, as well as the construction space. And we're absolutely needing to reshape our internal logistics. And then the question is, we think about what's happening with the legislature and

finance and bargaining.

We have to support this work.

Mm-hm.

And so how do we support those that we have on the team? Because if we ramp up a year, well, everything is moving up a year. And so that's a lot of logistics internally and externally, partnering districts. So we'll have a busy November, December as this takes shape. Because we know Skanska can build this in the timeline. But there's a lot of stuff that has to happen to go alongside. So I know that's part of our thinking, and we'll be reshaping the logistics plan before we get to the holidays that aligns to the timeline so that we're telling that story and involving

our partners along the way.

And I'm going to say, I think our community, once we start doing stuff out there, then it's the excitement's going to, right?

Right now. It's just beautiful.

Are they ever going to build the school out there?

The first time they drive by. Let's go up.

Is there a Tauly blogger?

Oh, there's a Land Above. Land Above? Yeah.

We do have Land Above, our own publications. We can boost, like we did with the Vaughn messages or media. So there's a lot of ways we can work to get folks out and about. To include, as we bring on some of our local labor partners, we can partner with, like, our carpenters or iron workers about, yeah, here's how we're keeping local dollars local.

Here's the impact.

Like, there's a lot of stories to tell that we'll just build that visioning out in November, December so that, okay, we have a good plan logistically of how to keep people apprised in the loop and build that excitement, not the least of which are students.

It feels like, so we're now in October, and it feels like now things are actually gaining some traction and it's going a little bit faster and a little bit faster. So just a reminder to take care of yourselves while you're going through this really fast

thing. Each lunch is slow. While you're running the district.

I want to compliment the team. I mean, everyone's very committed to support the district anyway.

The voters are there and building as successful as possible, the stage as accurate as possible. And the video that we had on our agenda of you and Cliff and… Oh, we can skip that part. That was great. Where are we, what are we talking about? Is that the meet the team video? Yeah.

That will be going publicly soon.

I know. I haven't seen it yet. It's on my agenda. Is it? Agenda for what? I don't know. It's going about tomorrow. There's a few of us that haven't seen said video. I know they have a shot. Oh, yeah. Good. Why are you letting the cat out of the bag? I watched it. All right. Is there sign-off somewhere? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There it is. Click. Click. Okay. Found it. All right. Abort oxygen? Yeah. No, it's not. Yeah. Who's watching it? No, no, no, no.

It is a link simply to our YouTube channel.

Oh, yeah. I did publish it on YouTube. Oh, it's on YouTube. I clicked on it. It's a video. I clicked on it. It went straight to it. And I watched it on YouTube. I did. I did. I did. Four hours ago. Is it? Four hours ago. Well, I watched yours. I did. I did. I did. I'm going to wait. You were doing your board right before the meeting, maybe? Oh, no. I always do that. But I clicked on it.

I've never seen that before, and I clicked on it.

So, whoa. Stay tuned for social media. Yeah.

But we do have the meeting team, as we discussed. The next video is about involving the community and the oversight. That was very important to you as a board. And then, by the time we get that far, after the holidays, we'll know from the sea, our design's

approved.

How's that timeline permitting process? And so, after the holidays, we're going to pivot to more of the story. Matt and his team probably inside OES with VR goggles and looking and capturing student voice.

Like, wow, this is cool. Staff voice. Feel some excitement.

You, as a board, have a wonderful thinking ahead of you of how do you want to plan the

ground opening?

What's your vision for when and who and how? And so, that's lots of things to be discussing in the next couple of months.

I don't know if there's any pictures, but you know that the cross-country team just yesterday used part of the property, and it was really, they were really excited when they were practicing that they were getting to use the hill.

Yes. Yes. Since there's so many hills to practice.

You know, so, I mean, that's another example of how we found, you know, some immediate use of the property, besides the kids on the farm.

Yes.

And the golf carts. Have you seen the golf carts going through there lately?

Oh, yeah. Golf carts. I don't see them. No, I have not.

Don't make any plans or vacations the first couple of weeks of April.

Okay.

No, but I would tell you being out yesterday with cross-country and just looking from the current campus and looking at the space and what that allows for the district and the local community, it's really exciting about what can not only happen in the near term, but what the next maybe 10 or 15, 20 years will do. It's a good anchor point for, I think, our community.

But it was very exciting that they were the first that come.

Yes. They're running on our new property. Cool.

Although the coach did ask me why there weren't any no trespassing signs.

And I told them. And I told them. You're going to get replaced. I told them. Well, they were down.

Well, this is the cross-country course.

Yes, so do you. No, no, no. No, no.

It was when they were practicing.

They said, I'm kind of surprised. There's no no trespassing. I said, well, there were. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. Smile. You're on camera now. Exciting meeting. That's good. Yeah. That's great.

I don't think it's anything very new here except just each

month we're just trying to keep high priority items.

Liz already mentioned November. That will be big on for us to get that foundation of Ireland permit.

Today we have a third party reviewer, which is kind of like your

review. It came out today. So they hired a firm. So that's official.

So there will be someone assigned specifically to our job,

so we don't slow down.

When is the meeting with the city for the CTE building,

the high school building? Has that been established yet? Well, we have not submitted.

We have not scheduled our going back for the architectural

design review yet. Okay.

So the likely scenario might be like December-ish or something,

I think, for that. I had somebody asking.

That's the only reason they were asking for it. We've seen renderings of the new elementary.

Super excited. What's going on with the high school? I'm like, oh, I see.

Well, no, you haven't seen it.

I can't see it yet. Yeah. Okay.

So far, all we have is what we've shown in the board meetings previously and the preview that we had with the

planning question. Okay.

I'm just going to call the question before Madam President brings the gavel board. Do you have any concerns with the state match that we shared? It's not an official vote, but it does come before you officially via resolution. Are we okay to proceed? Do you have any concerns or?

No.

And I think that the ideas of why we're tapping into that are

good ones. Okay. Yes. Agreed. Thank you. Everybody's agreed. Appreciate it. Perfect.

Five winks, five nods. We will move forward and bring further consideration for

you and then your future. Okay. Thank you. Nice. All right. Perfect. Thank you. Yes. Thank you so much for being here. You all.

I think I can speak for all of us because we've all implied

something.

It feels like we have a dream team together. So I really do appreciate you all very much. I have a couple of board comments. Are we ready for that?

Go ahead. Go ahead.

I was just going to say, do not be surprised that the highball deer is not afraid of fencing. I don't know if you shared my picture I sent you.

No, I didn't.

I was out walking in the evening and the deer was inside the baseball. With her baby. And she knew how to get out of the baseball field, but the baby didn't. And so the baby was actually banging itself against the fence. So I went in and I kind of...

No,

I went in and I went opposite her so that she would want to be running away from me towards the open gate. And she did finally, but I was very worried when she was banging herself into the fence.

So are you saying they can't have fencing? No, I'm just saying, don't be surprised if it's a perfect issue.

If you see a pie ball deer, it's short for fat, so make it high. I only, it was just a visual of you helping the deer over the fence that made me laugh. I can't imagine you ever walking away from that.

That's true.

I just was hoping that you didn't go in and then they, like, kicked you or something.

But I do tell them that they need to make sure that they shut the gates to the field.

You can go back. Yeah. Well, no, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the little one you couldn't jump over. Okay? So Kathy was out there picking it up. What I was imagining. Over that. I know how hundreds carried here. Oh dear. Okay. Oh god, that'd be a good meme.

All right, I do have one question from Bonnie about do we want to come in at 3.30 for diligent training before the next board meeting?

I do. I can be here early. Okay.

That's the 22nd, correct? It doesn't have to be all of us. I got on and went looking around.

It's actually, it looks pretty easy.

I was like, it didn't look real complicated, so I was like, I don't know.

Okay? It's pretty intuitive.

And so if you want to go out and play, you know, and just in the next week or so, and just kind of take a look at it, I will be a bit, I'll make myself available.

There wasn't a lot I could do. There's, well, that's it. I've seen something pop up, and then you click on something else, and the same thing pops up, and I was like, well, okay.

So just get out there and play.

You know, there's nothing you can do to hurt the new platform, so just.

You're in the sandbox, is what you're trying to say. You're in the sandbox, it's okay.

I think that's what they call an error message.

So just log in and just kind of, you know, you can look at policies, you can look at past meetings, you can look at, you know, I do have the current meeting up.

It's not. You did? Yeah.

It's not fully, we don't have all the reports out there yet, but.

All of that. Take a look at it. I didn't see the edit report yet. No. That's not until next week.

I don't post until next week, but it gives you an opportunity to play.

It sounds like a nightmare.

No, it's good. It'll be fine. We don't have a choice.

BoardDocs is going away, so, yeah.

So it's a come at 3.30 if you want to play around with diligence.

I'll make myself available. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.