The Omaha public school district is close to finishing an 18-month-long project that plans for the future of all 108 of its buildings.
The plan, which outlines each building’s maintenance and renovation needs over the next 20 years, amounts to a projected $2.29 billion in projects. While it still needs its finishing touches, school board members were able to get the first look at the plan during a workshop earlier this month.
“The intent of our facilities assessment is to catalog, identify our needs and look at them to plan for years ahead. Much like a homeowner would plan for a kitchen remodel or a bathroom remodel,” said Charles Wakefield, chief operations officer. “Our team walked every piece of our buildings — all 108 sites — looking at everything from above the roof to mechanical closets and looking at the windows.”
Wakefield said the district’s team of architects and OPS staff took photos of each item in every building, cataloged its condition and assessed the cost of replacement or renovation for the next five to 20 years. Each school has thousands of lines of data in the facilities assessment.
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The team also created lifespans of each piece of the buildings, estimating what components are critical to replace and what components can wait.
While people might get sticker shock over the total district cost of these projects, Wakefield said the number includes projected inflation and new technology.
“The goal for this is to not come up with all of this money today,” Wakefield said. “The goal for this is to come up for a plan (of) how we fold that in our budget so we are moving away from a reactive maintenance model to a more predictive maintenance model.”
During the presentation, Wakefield gave an example of the plan for Pawnee Elementary School, which is located in Bellevue.
The school building has maintenance needs that will cost $8 million over the next 20 years, but officials project that cost will be close to $11 million with inflation. Wakefield said there were roughly 50 items categorized as an “immediate” need, meaning it will need attention in the next three years. About 125 items were in the “critical” category, which will need to be addressed in the next four to eight years.
“For example, a critical issue for Pawnee we identified (is the) replacement for windows,” Wakefield said. “The windows of Pawnee are single-paned and quite dated, so it is something that needs to be replaced.”
Some immediate needs were things like paint, carpet and flooring.
“I’m really glad we are doing this stewardship step,” said board member Jane Erdenberger during the workshop.
Wakefield said the plan is 98% complete and he projects that the final completion will come in September. Some of the remaining tasks in the assessment include finishing the measure of educational adequacy and how much space is utilized in each school.
Another part of the plan was to also create “master visions” for each OPS high school. The plans are starting points for future renovations to schools that will help support student needs.
“We wanted to make sure we created vision for (each) high school so we are always working for a common goal. We often have leadership changes and feel like we are always starting over,” Wakefield said. “These aren’t architectural or construction drawings. There is no budget for this.”
Staff came up with design guidelines that should be used in each high school vision plan. Some of them include making spaces dynamic and for multi-use across all programs; adding or improving space for teacher collaboration; reducing lockers; and improving student services.
The presentation used Benson High School as an example for a master vision plan.
Some projects were expanding and renovating the library and media center along with the student commons; adding a large area specific to the freshman academy; and creating innovation labs.
Wakefield cautioned the board that while the goal is to do these projects in the next 20 years, there’s a good chance the district won’t be able to do everything.
“It’s just wonderful. I wish we could start tomorrow,” Erdenberger said. “It will be interesting to see what the community input is when you start taking out lockers in the high schools and things, but I think this is fantastic.”
The district’s next steps is to break down projects in plans for the next five, 10, 15 and 20 years.
“Ultimately, in the end, this is about our students and having them in an environment that helps them attain educational excellence as they move forward,” Wakefield said.