The Amesbury City Council has before it a resolution forwarded to us by the School Committee to approve the submission of a 'Statement of Interest' application to the Massachusetts School Building Authority for participation in their building program, in this case, for Amesbury Elementary School. To be considered for participation in MSBA's school repair and building program, local districts must first submit a 'Statement of Interest' application that has been voted on and backed by both the local School Committee and the Board of Selectmen/City Council. The School Committee voted unanimously to approve the SOI (with an an abstention from Mayor Gray) last month. [MSBA local vote requirements are very specific and can be found HERE.]
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| Amesbury Elementary School |
The School District has until April 10, 2015 to submit an SOI application; the Council vote is the final step in enabling that submission.
What does it mean? What, exactly, are we applying for, if we submit this 'SOI'?
I'll start with what we are not doing with this application.
We are not appropriating funds to repair, rebuild, or tear down Amesbury Elementary School, at least not at the present.
What we are doing is competing with other school districts across the Commonwealth in order to have the chance of making substantial upgrades to Amesbury Elementary at some point in the future.
The MSBA funds local school rehabilitation and building projects, on a cost-sharing basis with local communities. In order to participate in the MSBA's building program, districts must go through a multi-phase process. The submission of the 'Statement of Interest' is the first phase in this process. An overview of the 2015 SOI competition can be found HERE. As the MSBA reports, for the FY14 competition, MSBA received 227 applications from school districts. 111 were approved to take the next step in the MSBA's 'due diligence' process. Of the 108 applications for the MSBA's CORE program - the program that Amesbury would be applying to - only 28 proceeded past the due diligence phase on to the next feasibility study phase.
The point is, this is a very competitive program and scoring is based on the relative needs of school districts across the Commonwealth. It is typical for districts to apply multiple times before getting past the initial SOI phase.
What would it mean if our SOI application was accepted?
If an SOI is accepted for further review, the next phase is a 'Senior Study Site Visit.' According to the MSBA's website, "[c]onducting a Senior Study is part of the due diligence phase of the MSBA's newly reformed school renovation and construction grant program....The information acquired during the Senior Study will help the MSBA to determine the next steps in the process. The MSBA’s goal is to collaborate with the district to find the right-sized, most fiscally responsible and educationally appropriate solution to the facility’s problems. The Senior Study is not approval of a project. It is part of the due diligence phase of the MSBA’s new process." [emphasis mine]
At this point, if the district advances in the process, the MSBA would partner with the school district (and community) to undertake an extensive feasibility process, a process that is designed to fully assess a particular facility's needs in the context of a districts overall educational program, taking into account everything from enrollment trends to the financial state of the community. At this point, the district (and community) begin to make real commitments, working with MSBA to hire a qualified project team. Here, the District and its team collaborate with the MSBA to document their educational program, generate an initial space summary, document existing conditions, establish design parameters, develop and evaluate alternatives, and recommend the most cost effective and educationally appropriate preferred solution to the MSBA Board of Directors for their consideration." It is important to note that the district's costs for undertaking the feasibility process are reimbursable from MSBA.
Only after review of feasibility study is reviewed by the MSBA board, does a community enter into the design phase of the process. This is the phase were the full scope, design, budget, and schedule of the building project comes in to view. According to MSBA materials, "[t]he MSBA generates a Project Scope and Budget Agreement that documents the project scope, budget, schedule and MSBA financial participation to forward to the MSBA Board of Directors for their consideration. Approval by the MSBA Board of Directors is required for all projects in order for the MSBA to enter into a Project Scope and Budget Agreement and a Project Funding Agreement with the District." On the district/city side, the community must go through a public input phase and certify that it has gone through a public process for soliciting feedback that meets MSBA standards.
It is only after all of this that a project actually is voted on and approved for funding by the MSBA Board of Directors. As one can imagine, the process described above can take months, if not years, to complete.
Once the MSBA approves a project that has been fully studied, developed, and reviewed, the final phase before construction is funding. Should Amesbury actually make it to this point in the process, it is here that we would then have to take a public vote to appropriate funds - likely through what is called a 'debt exclusion' - to fund our share of the project. Once both the MSBA and the locality have approved funding, the project can move into the construction phase.
I'll save discussion of how this project would fit into Amesbury's long-term debt commitments for another post; this one's long enough already.
To RECAP:
The SOI is not a commitment of funds, nor is it a commitment to any particular building program or scope of work for Amesbury Elementary School.
The SOI is a statement from the Amesbury School District that the current facility has obsolete elements that substantially inhibit AES from fully achieving its educational program. And it is the first step in a long process that allows Amesbury to collaborate with MSBA to design a good project that meets the current and future needs of our students.
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