I'M BACK!!

Well, did you think I had abandoned the blog?!? To tell you the truth, I haven't had time during the day to write a posting and when I finally reach my warm, cozy home at night, the last thing I want to do is to get back on the computer. I will try to do better!

For those of you who continue to write with questions about standards-based report cards, please let me refer you to Dr. Peggy Connell's blog. It is her department who began that initiative prior to my coming to Muscogee County School District and she can fill you in on the progress of that project. Her blog is full of information that I would only be repeating here.

This past Saturday, the Board of Education met in a retreat setting for the administration to share with them our progress on all things SPLOST! We met for three hours and discussed with them the tremendous amount of work we have been doing so that we can move forward. It is very important that we plan laboriously and that we think of all of the details involved in getting everything in place. We wanted to make sure that we were heading in the direction that the Board of Education wanted us to go and that we were keeping them informed. They provided consensus on our direction and we are moving ahead!

Let me share a few of the items with you. We discussed the pros and cons of different project delivery methods such as design-bid-build, construction-management-at-risk, and bridging. As we prepare to complete each project, we will make a recommendation to the Board about the delivery method we would like to use. Now that the Board has heard the presentation, they will have the information they need to consider our recommendations.

We also talked about whether or not we needed the assistance of an outside project manager. We have a construction department which has done a great job managing projects, but the department personnel is limited, not in their knowledge, but in their time. We will have over $200 million worth of projects and we want to provide them the support they need to keep those projects moving in a productive way. The board agreed that we would develop an RFP for some specific assistance, but we would not hire a program management firm who would be fully responsible for carrying out the projects. Our construction team will continue to lead the way with outside assistance on specific areas.

We also discussed the relocation of Carver students. We shared with the Board our decision-points on the recommendation that we brought to them to move Carver students to Baker Middle School and moving the Baker students to Marshall where they will operate as a school within a school while Carver is being built. There have been many hours of determining how and where we would accomodate the Carver students while the new Carver is being built. We feel confident that this recommendation is the best one and was made after many internal discussions.

We talked about the individual projects and discussed the phases of the projects. We don't have a specific timeline yet because our bond underwriter and financial partner hasn't been selected yet. That firm will assist us in developing our projected cash flow and then we can insert dates into the phases. That recommendation will be coming to the Board at the December 7 meeting.

I will write about the phases in my next posting and tell you our thinking behind the way we developed that. You can see an overview in last Sunday's Ledger-Enquirer article.

As you can see, we have been busy working on strategy, planning this retreat, and getting everything done that we possibly can prior to collecting the first penny on the 2010 SPLOST. Thinking through to the strategic details takes time and effort and the staff has done a great job. The work we are doing now is critical. We have started "with the end in mind" as Stephen Covey teaches and we are working backwards to make sure everything is in place. In the "end" all of the projects will be completed, on time and within budget! That is our goal!!!! I will keep you posted!