LCC Supt. wants to make sure school’s future is solid

LAUREL — Laurel-Concord-Coleridge School may be stuck in the present with everyone else during the COVID-19 pandemic, but that doesn’t mean it can not look into the future.

That’s what Jeremy Christiansen is aiming for as the school’s superintendent aims to give the campus a facelift within the next couple of years.

“There have been no decisions made on any project, but we had to identify a scope of potential projects,” Christiansen said. “After the last 18 months, the LCC board of education has been doing a facility assessment and very strategic planning regarding facility needs and concerns and strengths and so forth.”

The board looked at how to responsibily use district resources, the efficient use of instructional space and the safety of staff, students and patrons.

“They identified that their main issue needs to be the current high school building in Laurel and provide services for 9-12 grades,” Christiansen said. “That building itself encompasses an original 1922 structure as well as a structure that was added in the 1960s. Also, it includes a series of metal buildings that house some other classrooms.”

The typical issues of an older building – leaks, unstable floors, heating and cooling – have led the board to make a move.

That move would include demolition of the 1922 building and a metal building, while keeping the 1960s wing. The hope is for new construction of an addition and a remodel of the existing facility.

“That’s going to require a bond issue,” Christiansen said. “We have spent quite a bit of time trying to decide between a traditional design process where we would work with an architect and community engagement and put it out to bid or we could use the construction manager at-risk process. Our board decided they wanted to use (the latter) because what happens is, we are able to get a construction manager on board at the point of planning and design instead of afterward.”

Such a move makes that person equal with the architect and the school in the building process, Christiansen said.

“What we are doing now is selecting the construction manager at-risk per the firm to be a part of the process,” he said. “Then we will form a community group of 25-30 people to hopefully go through the planning and design. We will do a lot of priority setting and see what we want and need. We will look at what we want for the future of our school system. Then we will add preliminary cost estimates and go back and prioritize.

“The board doesn’t want to build in a cornfield, but in the current footprint of where we are at. We have a prime location for the high school and we definitely want that to be included.”

Another part of the process is to renovate the elementary school building due to questions of efficient use of space and safety for the edifice built in the 1970s.

“Right now, it’s all conceptual and at the point of selecting the firm,” Christiansen said. “We had seven firms submit suggestion proposals.”

A board appointed committee has been selected and it has reviewed those seven proposals and identified the top three selections who were interviewed in May for about an hour each.

Ultimately, a construction manager at-risk would be put in place following contract negotiations.

“They have until September to decide to pass a resolution to voters to (vote on) and approve a bond,” Christiansen said. “That’s definitely not a done deal that we will pass that resolution. Maybe we are not ready to run a bond issue in November because that’s the proposal right now.”

Christiansen said a third tier set of concerns include the HVAC system and the middle school.

“It’s very specific to the manager at-risk selection,” he said. “The construction manager-at-risk method meets the statutory requirement for bidding. If the bond would pass, the construction manager-at-risk works with the school district and themselves to put out the bid packages for the sub-contractors to do the work.

“We expect to have a lot of interest.” Christiansen is enthused about the prospects going forward.

“I’ve only been here two years and it is very clear that when I first came on board one of my goals established by the board was to implement a very strategic facility improvement planning process,” he said. “Historically, there have been a lot of discussions of what may or may not need to be done, but it’s always stopped at that point. They want to move away from the nickel and diming of repair and update. It’s no longer feasible for us to do that since we are spending so much.

“It’s about how do we plan for the next 100 years and we can’t do that with engineered metal buildings. I am going to be a cheerleader for this project and make sure all the information is available. I am excited to see that this is our community’s project. It needs to come together and say ‘yes, this is our vision and this is what we want it to look like.’ It’s their school.”