What improvements are happening at Modesto City Schools sites? Here what’s coming next.
At a special meeting Monday night, the Modesto City Schools board heard a more-bang-for-taxpayer-buck update on facility improvement projects funded by Measures D and E, which were approved by voters in 2018.
The measures provided the district $131 million of total bond authorization. The first bond issuance, Series A, was in May 2019 for $27 million, all of which has been spent or encumbered on projects, Associate Superintendent Tim Zearley told trustees.
The board has a few new members since getting a facilities update last May. Zearley again said that because of its excellent credit rating and a favorable interest rate environment, taxpayers were saved $3.3 million between what the board approved and actual costs.
He also said the bond issuance schedule has been reduced from five series to three, with all bonds being issued by 2023 — four years earlier than anticipated.
“What this does is it lowers our bond issuance costs,” Zearley said. “That means more dollars get to go to facility improvements from the bond program, and less construction cost escalation for planned projects. The sooner we can get the projects in the system and get them going is less cost than it would be if it was years down the road.”
With the $27 million, a construction program started in June 2019 that includes projects at 22 elementary sites and four junior high sites.
The board heard highlights of the projects, including work completed this past summer:
- Exterior paint and dry rot repair at Bret Harte, Fairview, Kirschen, Martone and Wilson
- Playground structure replacement at Robertson Road, Fremont, Burbank and Martone
- And single-access points of entry — “that was very important to many of our schools” — at Lakewood, Sonoma, Muir, Fremont, Burbank, Franklin, Mark Twain, Roosevelt and Shackelford.
Priority projects at Fairview, Shackelford
“The board and administration agreed on eight priority school sites to address with the remainder of our Measure D and E funds,” Zearley told trustees.
The so-called Phase 1 projects include, this summer, work starting on a cafeteria and parking lot pickup areas at Fairview, and a cafeteria at Shackelford.
Next summer’s starts are a cafeteria and parking lot pickup area at Fremont and a cafeteria and front office remodel at El Vista.
Summer 2023 brings to Tuolumne a cafeteria, parking lot pickup and portable relocation, and to John Muir a cafeteria and front office remodel.
The last two of the eight priority projects start summer 2023: a cafeteria, parking lot pickup and bus access areas at Franklin, and a cafeteria and parking lot pickup at Orville Wright.
Other summer 2021 planned projects include a cafeteria under construction at Wilson; reconstruction underway because an arson fire in December 2017 destroyed a wing at Bret Harte; paint and dry-rot repair at Beard, Fremont, Sonoma, Muir and El Vista; playground structure replacement at Tuolumne, Enslen, Franklin and Robertson Road; single-access point of entry at Lakewood; new parking, pickup and drop-off areas to ease traffic congestion at La Loma; and a STEAM/STEM classroom addition at Tuolumne.
Of the last project, Zearley commented, “It’s a new concept. It’s going to offer an exciting opportunity to our families at Tuolumne.”
Junior High science lab renovations were a high priority among voters, the associate superintendent told the board, and that work begins this summer at Hanshaw, followed by La Loma in 2022, Mark Twain in 2023 and Roosevelt in 2024. “The work will be to renovate existing classrooms,” he said. “We are not building new facilities on our junior high campuses.”
District-funded projects
Zearley also gave highlights of projects funded by the district not using Measure D and E. Among them are exterior paint at Davis High, Downey cafeteria serving area modernization, a Johansen fitness center and a Davis High Health Services Academy building.
In recent years, Modesto, Davis and Johansen have had cafeteria updates like Downey will get. “The opportunity here is to turn that into an area much more attractive to high school students, much more like a Starbucks feel or something where they want to go and spend time with each other,” Zearley said.
The fitness center will be a great addition to Johansen, which was built without a weight room, he said. So the coaches and PE teachers put it on the second floor of a building, Zearley said, “and over time, just the sheer dropping of the weights, the sheer everything going on, it did start to damage the concrete floor.”
The second series of bonds will be $60 million, to be issued around May, Zearley said. Series B will go before the board on March 29 as an informational item, and then the board will be asked on April 19 to approve issuance.
District officials also will begin planning for future elementary and high school bond measures, he said, to potentially be on November 2022 and 2024 ballots.
The slide show of the facilities report is embedded in Monday’s agenda, which can be viewed at bit.ly/3uHU6qZ. Video of the meeting can be viewed on the MCS Board of Education channel on YouTube.
This story was originally published March 3, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
