Evanston/Skokie School District 65’s new Master Facilities Plan draft, authored by architecture firm StudioGC, projects the district will need to devote $598 million to facilities spending over the next 49 years.
Project Executive Patrick Callahan discussed the draft with the District 65 Board of Education during the board’s March 23 meeting. According to Callahan, the report’s spending estimate is not intended to be followed directly but instead aims to inform the district’s decision-making on where to invest resources.
“This is a set of variables that allows you to make decisions as you look at how students are educated and where they’re educated,” Callahan said at the meeting.
StudioGC’s figure marked a significant uptick in expenditures from the previous $188 million estimate in facilities spending over the next 20 years from the Cordogan Clark Master Facilities Plan, which was presented to the board in March 2022. Callahan said his firm took a broader scope in its assessment. He added that a built-in 4.5% annual cost increase to keep up with rising costs made up about one-third, or $202.5 million, of the new estimate.
The report also included a Facilities Condition Index for each school, a metric that compared the assessed facilities costs from 2027 to 2033 relative to the cost of replacing the entire building.
Park School and Willard Elementary and Washington Elementary Schools had the worst FCI in District 65, indicating the worst facilities conditions.
Callahan also attributed the increased cost projection to the addition of the 10 Year Health Life Safety report, a mandatory inspection for Illinois public school buildings to identify violations of minimal health and safety standards.
The report identifies $19 million in spending across the next five years needed to address urgent safety violations, such as outdated fire alarm panels, accessibility needs and galvanized water plumbing piping fixes.
It comes as the district looks to complete Phase 3 of its Structural Deficit Reduction Plan, which aims to reduce the district’s budget by $16 million to $18 million by the fiscal year 2030. At the board’s March 23 meeting, board members questioned whether closing schools would decrease maintenance costs at those properties.
Stacy Beardsley, assistant superintendent of performance management and accountability, noted that the district still will be responsible for some maintenance costs even after schools close. According to Beardsley, around 60% of maintenance costs will still be necessary.
District 65 parent Jason Orloff, a former member of the Structural Deficit Reduction Plan’s Finance Committee, said xhe is a strong advocate of prioritizing the $200 million deferred maintenance and capital improvements, recalling an instance a “200-pound light fixture fell on (xim) from that two story ceiling.”
Orloff urged the board to prioritize the most neglected schools and most important issues.
“I can tell you for a certainty that there are utilities that are improperly installed and facilities that are crumbling, and if they are not maintained, they will not be maintainable,” Orloff said.
Orloff also criticized the current assessment for being conducted by an architecture firm that included many “nice-to-haves,” rather than being conducted by a facilities engineer who could better identify building hazards.
District 65 parent Mike Boll said the inclusion of unnecessary expenses was also an issue with the 2022 Cordogan Clark plan.
“It would be awesome, but we’re talking about closing a school versus having air conditioning,” Boll said.
At the March 23 meeting, board member Maria Opdycke said the board will need to decide between short-term and long-term investments, especially as the district considers the planned $2.4 million in repairs to Martin Luther King Jr. Literary and Fine Arts School slated for this summer.
“Are we just going for a patch-and-maintain?” Opdycke said. “Or are we going to think more long-term about how we build a future-ready building footprint and what all that could potentially be?”
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