By Joseph Goral
Staff Writer
jgoral@mihomepaper.com
LAKE ORION — The Lake Orion Community Schools Board of Education and district administration continued reviewing data gathered from needs assessments conducted throughout the district as part of their planning for a future bond during a workshop meeting on Jan. 22.
The data was presented to the board and administration in two parts. First, Tom VanDeGriend of GMB presented facilities-assessment data, then Amy Sasina of Plante Moran presented technology data.
Facilities assessments
VanDeGriend said GMB met with district stakeholders, including every building principal, staff, all district directors and others to ask them about their goals and wishes for their facilities. Through these meetings, GMB created a document with hundreds of items mentioned by stakeholders from each school.
Now that GMB gathered this data, VanDeGriend said they will start assembling, sorting and putting logic to it. In other words, VanDeGriend said, the next step is prioritization.
“We just need to narrow down the 10,000 items down to 1,000 that are potentials so that we can put more effort into those items, verify the sort of square footages that might be affected, that kind of thing,” VanDeGriend said, adding that GMB will gain a better understanding of costs through prioritization.
The final step will be creating action plans, he said. This includes looking at funding sources, and other options. “That is not anywhere near (these) first discussions here yet.”
Several desired upgrades across the district stakeholders mentioned include playground upgrades at Carpenter Elementary School, a septic field replacement at Oakview Middle School, auditorium upgrades at Lake Orion High School and more.
VanDeGriend closed with big-picture upgrades that were mentioned, including ADA-inclusive upgrades, whiteboards, busses, appropriately-sized rooms for special education and more.
Superintendent Heidi Mercer then provided the board with handouts containing themes and priorities – themes being instances where the same item was mentioned across multiple buildings. Mercer asked the board to provide feedback by ranking each theme from high to low priority, and by adding to the list.
The board will work on the list during another workshop in February, Mercer said.
Technology data
Sasina said Plante Moran looked at the $160 million bond from 2018, what was completed since that bond, and developed a budget based on refresh cycles.
Sasina’s presentation included numerous items divided into four categories – infrastructure, instructional technology, instructional support technology and safety and security.
Items under the infrastructure category totaled around $1.24 million and included structured cabling, fiber and a phone system.
Instructional technology items with costs listed ­ at least $1 million include teacher devices, around $1.79 million, student devices, around $13.4 million, lab devices, around $1.6 million, audio/visual classroom, around $5.46 million, large area presentation, around $2.04 million, and curriculum specific at around $2.2 million. The instructional technology category totals $27,823,150.
The only item in the instructional support technology category with a cost of at least $1 million is networking equipment/switches at around $2.1 million. All instructional support technology items total $5.7 million.
The majority of safety and security’s total of $7,758,000 is made up of PA/Clocks, $3.16 million, and video surveillance.
Plante Moran has tech design fees, a 10% contingency fee and a 3% cost escalator, according to Sasina, which brings the grand total to $50,611,518.
If the Trump administration implements tariffs, the grand total could increase by 25%, according to Sasina’s presentation.
“While construction-wise there will still be tariff considerations if those are put into place, it’s going to really, really hit hard on technology because not a lot of technology is built here” Sasina said. “A lot of it is built in other countries.”
Still, costs could be reduced by potential e-rate funding. Sasina said the district could get up to 50% of costs back up to a certain limit based on a per-pupil allowance.
For example, if a network cost $2 million, Sasina said she does not know if the district would get a full $1 million back, but “you’ll get a portion of that back.”
The board’s next workshop is scheduled for Feb. 26, from 3-8 p.m.