By Charly SHELTON

Last Monday, the Glendale Unified School District Board of Education held a special session meeting to go over some of the finer points and the future of Measure S- the ballot initiative approved by 70% of voters in April, 2011 which makes $270 million available to GUSD to renovate and improve schools as they see fit. Every so often, the board assesses new project proposals and assigns priorities to the upcoming projects, to accomplish them in the order most needed.

This special meeting covered aspects from contractor selection to fee billing calculation to a list of upcoming projects selected for the next few years. Among the upcoming projects are the Verdugo Woodlands Elementary cafetorium, an update to the Glendale High School Aquatic Center, upgrades to the Hoover High School auditorium and a new portable classroom building at Dunsmore Elementary.

In the last special Measure S study session meeting on April 26, the Board asked for input directly from the schools themselves. Projects have been selected through inside stakeholders at the school sites, with Principals, faculty and members of the Facilities and Support Operations staff at each site. These stakeholders were asked to suggest projects, and then a list of the top five priorities at each school site was compiled and the projects were selected from those.

Once the project is approved to begin, it goes through seven phases. The schematic design phase, design development phase, construction document phase and Department of the State Architect’s approval take place before the job is ever brought before a specific contractor. The bidding and award phase is where a contractor is chosen to do the job, and they will carry out the construction while the District handles the construction administration phase, before the final step- project close out. These phases were covered in the special meeting, as was a restatement of the legal statures of the Public Contract Code- the District is required to award the job to the lowest, responsible and responsive bidder.

More information and copies of the full presentation on Measure S and the upcoming projects can be found at GUSD.net.

  Charly Shelton