Alaska News

Review calls for change in management of Anchorage school facilities

A newly released review of the Anchorage School District's facilities operations highlights numerous deficiencies in how the district estimates the costs of capital projects, how it secures funding for those projects and how it manages them.

The review, made public Tuesday, offers 28 recommendations on how the district could improve, including filling critical job vacancies on a timely basis, noting that the top facilities position went unfilled for three years.

ASD administrators and the Council of the Great City Schools presented the review at a special School Board meeting Tuesday afternoon -- a week before the April 7 municipal election, when voters will decide the fate of a $59.3 million school bond to pay for capital projects at eight schools.

Mike Abbott, ASD's chief operating officer, said Monday that the special meeting was called because the school district did not want to create the perception that it held back the review's findings until closer to the vote. Under typical protocol, the administration would have presented the findings at the next School Board meeting, scheduled for the day before the election, Abbott said.

The review was completed by the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of 66 of the nation's largest urban public school systems. The council has previously completed several reviews for the Anchorage School District in areas including math instruction, food services and organizational structure.

In its 14-page facilities review, the council said the school district did some things well. It praised ASD for the competent, hardworking and dedicated employees within the Facilities and the Maintenance and Operations departments, as well as its six-year facilities plan. It noted that ASD had a robust preventive maintenance program as well as a strategic plan that called for high operational efficiency.

But the council also found items it didn't like. For one, the review said the school district's Facilities Department went three years without a director. During that span, the department lacked an executive to champion capital projects and maintenance programs, the review said.

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Abbott said the previous facilities director retired in 2011. At the time, a couple of school bonds had failed, he said. Without funding coming in for capital projects -- which also fund the staff that manage those projects -- the district intentionally left the position vacant for six months. Then, bonds were passed.

The district recruited for the position four times. It wasn't until December 2014 that it hired a new director. In the interim, Abbott, along with two other school district employees, made the decisions on capital projects. But Abbott acknowledged that during that time the department lacked professional development and staff support.

"It took much longer than we had hoped it would to recruit a candidate for the position," Abbott said. "We never thought we were more than a few months away from solving the problem permanently."

Other findings and observations included:

• There was no School Board-level committee that focused on facilities.

• The council heard concerns about the Facilities Department's ability to accurately estimate the cost of capital projects. For example, a review of six bid documents for capital projects found that the school district's cost estimates exceeded related bids by about 35 percent.

• The council found no formal process within the school district to report budgeted vs. actual costs, along with explanations, for bond or legislative grant projects.

• It was reported to the council that staff morale was low within the Facilities and Maintenance and Operations departments.

The council also took issue with the framework for the school district's legislative grant process. Under the current process, each school completes a list of capital requests and the Legislature decides what to fund. The projects are not prioritized at a district-wide level, Abbott said.

Abbott said the process has created relationships between individual schools and legislators and many projects have received grant funding during flush financial times. However, he said, the School Board and administration became concerned about the process when it grew quickly and price tags increased.

In its review, the council noted that there was little connection between the grant requests and the school district's six-year facilities plan.

Of the 28 recommendations included in the review, the school district agreed with 24, said ASD Superintendent Ed Graff. He said none of the recommendations came as a surprise. The School Board and administration requested the review in fall 2014.

"I think this report confirms that we're on the right track," Graff said. "We're focused on continuous improvement."

The review's recommendations included:

• Merge all facilities-related departments, offices and programs into a new Facilities Department that is headed by one person. Develop a business plan for that department. Graff said the school district would analyze the benefits of reorganization.

• Review funding options for capital projects and identify if there are stable, longer-term financing options to pay for larger, multiyear projects. Abbott said about 90 percent of funds for capital projects come from annual bonds, which have recently come under fire in the Legislature.

• Centralize, coordinate and prioritize all capital funding requests. The school district agreed that funding requests could be better coordinated.

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School Board member Natasha von Imhof said after the meeting Tuesday that the review allowed the school district to see how its operations compared to those of similar U.S. districts.

"I would argue that it takes some courage for us to parade this across the public," she said.

Von Imhof said that after looking over the review she wanted to see a breakdown of capital project costs, referring to one of the review's findings.

The review said that design and engineering costs amount to roughly 30 percent of total project costs, which the council said appeared high.

School district administration speculated that the district included costs associated with design that most other school districts did not. But the council said Tuesday that the guidelines of what to include were clear.

Graff said the school district would follow up with the council. By summer, the school district will develop plans for each of the recommendations and present them to the School Board, he said.

"We expect this to be something we continue to monitor and support over the next several months and into the next school year," he said.

Tegan Hanlon

Tegan Hanlon was a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News between 2013 and 2019. She now reports for Alaska Public Media.

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