Paul Bass Photo
Clark, NH Academy Principal Greg Baldwin tour construction site.
The school had just opened, and Will Clark noticed that paint was already peeling on the banisters.
He made that discovery at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School. He was there “kicking the tires.”
He had also kicked the tires at Fair Haven School. He noticed the banisters there remained in good shape.
Lesson learned: From then on, New Haven would require stainless steel banisters in new schools.
And Clark and company would keep kicking the tires.
No other Connecticut city — or per capita, no other U.S. city — has had as much practice building and rebuilding schools as New Haven over the past 21 years. We’ve spent $1.67 billion and counting, most of it reimbursed by the state, turning 42 buildings into sun-filled temples to learning. Coming online later this year: new homes for New Haven Academy; the Reginald Mayo (formerly Helene Grant) Early Learning Center; and ESUMS, a.k.a. the Engineering and Science University Magnet School.
In the process, New Haven has learned practical lessons, like the one about banisters, about how to build new schools so they last and keep down maintenance costs. Lessons that can benefit not just New Haven but all cities rising to the school-construction challenge (a challenge, according to a new study, that much of the country is currently failing).
As the school district’s chief operating officer since 2007, Will Clark has been learning and implementing those lessons. He sees his mission as “stewardship” of those new schools. The school district has “a responsibility to preserve that investment,” he said.
He shared those lessons on an episode of WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven.” Including, in addition to the need for steel banisters …
Check The Wood
Gilad Edelman Photo
A new classroom at East Rock on reopening day.
Soon after assuming his job, Clark formed a “kick the tires” committee of custodians, school officials, and others familiar with day-to-day wear and tear on schools. When a construction crew has completed a new school, the committee comes with a checklist before the school district signs off on completion.
When the “tire” crew visited the completed new home for East Rock School, it walked into a classroom that would house computers. Clark grabbed the wood paneling. It was flimsy.
“There’s no way this is going to last a week, let alone 20 years,” he concluded, based on experience at rooms in other schools where, say, computer desks got high use. “Kids are going to use it, shake it, mess with it.”
“I know I’d be putting in a work order the next week,” a custodian said.
From then on the district specified thicker wood to be used in computer nooks and other high-use desks.
The crew checked the latches and door handles. Those too needed to be sturdier. When Clark opened a door, it “pulled away a little bit rather than [staying] firmly planted to the door.” The crew focused on the doors with the highest traffic in a functioning school, such as the ones leading into the gym and used for entering and exiting the building from bus drop-off spots.
Maintenance Breeds Respect
Clark said he has found that if crews keep up with, say, graffiti and the overall exterior condition of a building, it draws less vandalism overall. So does making use of school buildings after school hours. He spoke of how the new schools have become safe “neutral turf” for teens from different neighborhoods playing in an “alternative” basketball league for students from smaller high schools that lack teams.
“In any urban center, we have our vandalism. We’ve got to be really conscious about that,” Clark said. “What we’ve found by and large [is that] people respect the schools…. They can be sacrosanct areas. They can become points of community pride. Different factions can come and get along.”
Protect The Floors
Paul Bass Photo
Will Clark at the WNHH radio studio.
Clark’s crew “kicked the tires” of schools that had already gone online as well. One was Ross Woodward. There, the crew noticed work orders had piled up, along with verbal complaints, about the floors. They were “getting gouged by the furniture.”
The problem ended up being not the tile, but the furniture.
“The legs on the chairs were such that the rubber or the felt would wear very quickly. You literally had metal going into floor tile. Kids figured that out. They would throw a pencil in there. Kids are kids; [they did it] for fun. We had these black gouges in the floor. Then we’d wax over it; now you’re preserving the black gouge.
“We realized, number one, we can’t use that furniture…. The manufacturer came up with [a] new model to avoid the rubber wearing out quickly. The schools adjusted their standards for future furniture purchases as well.
Find That Color “Balance”
At Ross Woodward and other schools, the walls and floors were quickly showing wear and tear, not just because of the furniture, but because of the color choices, Clark noticed.
White and yellow paint brightened up the rooms and reflected the natural sunlight emphasized in the schools’ designs. But they also looked dirtier faster.
Clark sought colors that preserved the bright feel but could “take the wear and tear better” on the floors and walls. That meant more “neutral” colors with a slightly darker hue — darker yellow, for instance, at Ross Woodward.
At New Haven Academy’s soon-to-open $44 million new home at Bradley and Orange Streets, the floor tile has a “marble” black-and-white speckled color. “That could solve the whole problem,” Clark said. “We revised our standards that these have to be considerations. I’m not telling them what to pick. We’re restricting the edges and focusing them on the goal.”
Anticipate Enviro-Surprises
Aliyya Swaby Photo
Hillhouse band at last reopening of Bowen Field.
The school construction program included the renovation of Bowen Field, which came in years and millions of dollars over original estimates. The big reason: “four miles of caulk that held those cement bleachers together. It all had to go.”
The same happens when work begins on an older building, Clark said. Federal standards require checking for environmental hazards, which can drive up the original cost estimates of remedies. Planners need to prepare and budget for these “surprises” from the outset, he said.
Time The Technology
AFB
Rather than always repair HVAC systems or lights, sometimes it makes sense long-term to take advantage of new cost-saving technology. But it makes sense to wait for the right moment, Clark said.
He cited Lincoln-Bassett School as an example. Some of the new computer and HVAC equipment wore out or became outdated.
A few years ago Lincoln-Bassett was selected as a state “commissioner’s network” school. That meant state bond money to support a “turnaround” plan — mostly for academic plans, but also for needed facility upgrades. That was the right time to make those purchases, he said.
In general, the schools have been replacing old ballasts and halogen lights with LED lights. That costs more money up front, but more than pays for itself over time by cutting energy costs by as much as 80 percent, he said.
The schools have also gone solar in some cases. As with the Lincoln-Bassett upgrades, the system has waited to take outside funding when it becomes available, such as when the state and United Illuminating offers rebates for solar installations. Similarly, Clark said, the schools waited two or three years to switch to LED lighting until more products came on the market, with improvements and lower costs. (This document details upgrades at Lincoln-Bassett.)
Data Works
As soon as new schools come on line, Clark said, he incorporates the architectural plans into a database that tracks room-by-room maintenance. The system tracks work orders to identify arising problems, as well as permits for outside use of facilities to know when increased maintenance is required.
“We put together the cleaning plan. We put together the maintenance plan. We have specific people assigned to specific areas. Color coded, the whole nine yards.”
Based on that data, the schools throw a pizza party each month for the maintenance team at the cleanest school.
Clark’s office also pinpoints which part of a school is having repeated problems and who is responsible. That happened recently with reports of persistently dirty bathrooms and open windows at Hillhouse, Clark said.
Thanks to the data-tracking system, “we talk to that person. We make sure that person is trained properly, has the tools they need…. Hillhouse has over 1,000 permits [for special use] a year. There’s over 500 work orders in a year. We know someone’s in the gym; we know we have to clean the bathroom afterwards.”
Set Higher Hiring Goals
New Haveners Leyson Vazquez and Jose Aviles on the job at New Haven Academy.
After Mayor Toni Harp took office two years ago, Clark said, she urged the schools to raise goals for local and minority hiring on construction jobs. He said the schools did, and have met the new goals set in project labor agreements with contractors.
“You can raise the targets” and succeed if you work hard at it, he said. Data for 2015 on the three current school construction projects — listed on page 21 of this document — showed blacks and Latinos working 51 percent of the hours, double the stated goal; women working 8 percent of the hours, compared to a 6.9 percent goal; and New Haveners working 26 percent of the hours, compared to a 25 percent goal.
“You meet folks who work on these projects. They don’t just work on our projects.. They can go work on Yale projects; they can do other things.”
Clark cited this study by Yale School of Management researchers showing that the city’s school reconstruction projects have helped boost test scores, as well as home prices.
“These are not just glossy nice things for schools,” he said of the construction projects. “They’re not just nice things for neighborhoods. They create jobs.”
Click on or download the above sound file to listen to the full interview about school construction with Will Clark.
Contributed photo
Hill Regional Career High custodial crew at the most recent pizza party to recognize the cleanest school.
Appreciate a full article diving deeply into the details of the school construction program and also the link above to the monthly committe reporting that I posted here when Malloy visited Cross:
http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/malloy_budget_balance/
There is a lot to merit in this article and in Mr. Clark's approach. Think their use of data is excellent and commendable. Am pleased with the results of the hiring program also. Am somewhat discouraged that less emphasis is paid in the piece about the firms (mostly local also) that are making that hiring happen through their real commitment. And how much more that commitment means to home-growing a resourceful local craft labor force than being shamed and Gil-blamed for missing a non-mandatory target.
The positive aspects here should not distract us from, nor excuse at all, the excess of this program. It is shocking how cost inefficient these projects have been. The schools are also much larger than necessary on a sf / pupil basis and the article ignores the absolute cost to maintain them by only speaking in relative terms to energy efficiency and imarginal cost improvement by means of LEDs, etc.
For those who have watched this program since before it was one, since the award for Career's AE services, the outcomes may have incrementally improved but the legacy remains decidedly mixed.