The Warwick School Committee’s regular Tuesday meeting heard updates on the new high schools, the district’s finances and some potential cuts to the planned new high schools.
John Bates, of LeftField Project Management, said that due to the amount of time spent on value management, groundbreaking on the new Pilgrim and Toll Gate high schools would be pushed back from March to late April or early May.
The overall timeline of the project, Bates said, would not be affected, however, as he said that Dimeo, the company managing the construction of the high schools, was condensing its schedule, and the buildings were still expected to be ready for the students to move into by the summer of 2027.
“Our construction manager has taken a very close look at the schedule and thinks there’s enough float, as we call it in the business, that we can squeeze the schedule and not impact the mid-date of construction,” Bates said. “Dimeo is condensing their schedule so that the final construction delivery target remains the same.”
Bates also presented the council with a list of items to be taken out of the project through value engineering, which is a construction process that attempts to lower a project’s cost by taking out some of its elements. The list of items to be value-engineered, Bates said, would not affect the quality of education at the new high schools.
“We certainly had to find areas to save money, but this largely will be things building users don’t recognize, and we still haven’t cut the programs that these schools require to deliver 21st-century education,” Bates said.
More than 200 different items in the two schools were listed in LeftField’s value engineering document under four different categories – approved, alternate, possible or rejected. Rejected items were determined to be uncuttable, approved categories had been incorporated into LeftField’s previous cost estimates, alternate items were those LeftField had identified as possibilities to be returned to the project, and possible items were ones the company felt were not worth the cost of incorporating.
Though the impetus for most of the value engineering was to save costs, Bates said other considerations had led to some items being put on the list. Bates pointed out one item – reducing the structural design in the buildings by half a pound per square foot – as an example of an item to be value-engineered out of the prospect based on the guidance of other parties of the construction process.
“That’s a recommendation that came from your structural designer, who happens to be a nationally recognized firm,” Bates said. “And it’s the type of design refinement – not a cut, a refinement – that would typically come at this stage of design development.”
Members of the School Committee, however, did not approve of some of the cuts listed, and moved to put back in the project some of the items that LeftField would have value-engineered out.
Among those was School Committee Chair Shaun Galligan, who made a motion which passed unanimously to reverse changes to path modifications at both schools, and cuts including mezzanine storage areas at Pilgrim’s CTC spaces, some of the bleachers in Pilgrim’s gym, the press box at Pilgrim’s baseball and softball fields, new scoreboards at Pilgrim and Toll Gate’s football fields, and the walkway from Toll Gate to Winman Middle School’s fields.
In addition to Galligan’s motion, Vice Chair Leah Hazelwood also added back in items related to the childhood development CTC program to be housed at Pilgrim, saying that playgrounds would be necessary for the children going through that program and that changing the playground surfacing to loam would not be appropriate for kids of that age.
Some items that were included in the value engineering include shrinking Toll Gate’s lowest level, keeping excess soils on site, and changing materials for items including stairs and floors.
Cost-wise, Bates said, the high schools were trending in the right direction after they were found in October to be significantly over the $350-million budget that the schools have.
“It’s safe to say [costs] are trending downwards,” Bates said. “And as the details continue to be refined, it’s looking better.”
The high school projects will receive a new overall cost estimate in January. Additionally, a third special meeting focused on the schools’ construction will occur Jan. 28, and will include a question-and-answer session for members of the public.
General finances
The committee also received a financial update a month after Finance Director Brandon Bohl said the district would immediately halt all discretionary spending in an attempt to remain under budget for Fiscal Year 2025.
This time, Bohl said he had been working with budget managers to list potential cuts throughout the second half of the school year. Overall, he said, the cuts added up to $750,000 in potential savings.
Another potential area of savings, Bohl said, could come from overtime expenditures, which he said have been 40% lower than at this point last year.
“That could potentially save the district $200,000 if we keep this pace,” Bohl said. “We’re trying to manage things a bit more tightly in order to see where we can find savings, and this is just another example.”
Committee bids farewell to Bachus
At the end of the meeting, the committee also said farewells to Karen Bachus, as last night’s meeting was the final session of her 12-year tenure on the committee.
Bachus, who will be replaced on the committee by Sean Wiggins, said that throughout her time in office, she has been proud to fight for the students, teachers and parents of Warwick, and that she would continue to work to help Warwick Public Schools in any way she could.
“It’s been the honor of my life to work on this committee, to fight the fights I’ve fought, which have been many,” Bachus said. “But also to bring this district forward with the leadership that I’ve worked for since 2013. And I’m very glad to leave this committee with such a fine and dedicated leadership team and such a great team on the School Committee.”