School board wrestles with, but approves $879K school kitchen bid

March 26, 2023 | By Lisa Scagliotti 

Sticker shock didn’t deter the Harwood Unified Union School District’s School Board last week from voting to move ahead with plans to build a functional commercial kitchen into Waitsfield Elementary School later this year. 

Even if it ultimately costs over $1 million. 

The board on Wednesday had a lengthy discussion about facility maintenance and renovation projects that could be done this year. Facilities and Operations Director Ray Daigle looked to the board for approval of the project list in the district’s three-year maintenance plan in order to begin lining up contractors and supplies for projects to be done this summer when school is not in session. 

File photo of the Waitsfield school kitchen from architect TruexCullins.

A specific separate question for the board was whether to accept a single high bid for construction at Waitsfield Elementary School to finally create a proper commercial kitchen where breakfast and lunch meals for the school’s roughly 170 students can be prepared. If built, the new kitchen would also be where food staff prepares meals for the approximately 70 students at Fayston Elementary School. 

Currently, the opposite happens with meal preparation for both schools happening in Fayston, and meals are transported by staffers to Waitsfield. Because the larger school also lacks an adequate dishwasher, dirty dishes from those meals at Waitsfield have to be returned to Fayston to be cleaned. This elaborate system has played out five days a week for years with the kitchen remodeling plan continually getting pushed into the future.  

As a result, the costs have climbed and the most recent increase has been especially steep. In February 2022, architects for the district estimated the kitchen improvements would cost $402,000. Given trends in the past year in the construction industry, however, that expectation was revised last fall when school officials decided to seek bids. Architects then advised that costs likely would run closer to $554,000. 

Daigle told the board that the district approached 10 contractors to see if they would go through the process to prequalify to bid on the job. Only two contractors agreed to do so and one withdrew before making a bid saying they had landed another contract for the same time period and could not potentially manage both jobs. 

That left just Farrington Construction Company of Shelburne interested in the project. Its bid came in at $879,318. 

District Finance Director Lisa Estler pointed out that the amount only pertains to construction. Additional costs including final designs, engineering, construction documents and contingencies will push the total project price tag up, she explained, estimating the complete cost at $1,045,849. 

Board discussion 

Initially, school board Chair Kristen Rodgers and Vice Chair Kelley Hackett in their pre-meeting report to the board recommended holding off on approving the bid given the cost and that the district only received one proposal. 

Several board members agreed with that approach. “I’m not against the project,” Fayston board member Mike Bishop said. “I’m against the timing of it.” 

Bishop suggested re-evaluating the project or possibly trying to get additional bids. 

Daigle said the physical space in the school limits the size of the project and that there is little room to scale back. The space needs new electrical, plumbing and structural work to accommodate modern appliances and equipment. 

“We looked at that and asked what can we pare down, and we came up with $20- or $30,000 but we knew in the end in two or three years we’d be cursing ourselves,” he said. 

“I hear Mike and I agree the million seems like a lot, but it’s going to be a million and a half if you push it,” Warren member Ashley Woods said. “I think it’s been a necessity since they build the school without a kitchen in it. I am for it.” 

J.B. Weir, Waitsfield’s new school board member elected on March 7, said the school has been short-changed by the inadequate kitchen for years and it impacts students’ “happiness and health and safety.”

Likewise, new board member Ben Clark from Moretown agreed. “I really feel like this is a no-brainer. It should have been passed probably a long time ago,” he said.  

Fayston member Danielle Dukette asked about staffing changes once the new kitchen is built and expressed concern that meals would then be transported to Fayston. Estler replied that the existing staff would likely shift so all food prep for the two schools happened at the larger Waitsfield school. She suggested food service administrators could discuss those details with the board further at a future meeting. 

Life LeGeros of Duxbury said he was trying to look at the project in the broader context of all of the district’s maintenance and upgrading needs. Although the Maintenance Reserve Fund with $4.5 million can pay for the kitchen, the three-year project list has over $10 million of items on it. The larger list of deferred maintenance from Daigle’s earlier presentation in the meeting was in the realm of $25-30 million. Should the district need to start budgeting for building projects rather than just replenishing the reserve with annual surpluses, those items would compete with other district spending such as counselor positions funded through federal pandemic-recovery funding, LeGeros suggested. “So we don’t actually have the money,” he said. “We have to think carefully about what we are spending on. If we’re spending on this, we’re deferring other stuff.”  

Woods replied with: “I would argue that this is the heart and soul of deferred maintenance.”

Several board members remarked on receiving emails about the kitchen question ahead of Wednesday’s meeting. A Waterbury Roundabout story the day before highlighted the decision needed on the bid. A records request to the district for emails the board received produced six messages, all of which called for doing the kitchen project now because of the need and that costs are likely to increase if it’s delayed further. 

Several went further asking about facility needs at the high school as well. 

“I am anxiously waiting for the superintendent, staff and the board to come up with a new plan to repair and make updates to our high school. Next fall will mark two years since the last bond/plan failed at the voting booths and I haven't seen any public concepts/plan nor am I aware of any public outreach around a new plan. Our high school needs updating badly,” wrote Matt Lillard of Waitsfield. 

Parent Akhil Kaplan will have three children at Harwood next year and is committed to supporting the public schools despite seeing others in the community opt for private schools with better facilities than the local public high school. 

“The building itself is in pathetic shape. “It’s time we figure out a way to make some

improvements to the building so that our children do have some sense of pride in Harwood,” Kaplan wrote. “The kids talk about it all the time… Our kids should be

proud to go to school and having good facilities is part of that pride. Is there a plan to make these changes soon?”

Delaying building improvements will only mean higher costs for them eventually, Kaplan continued. “Do we need half of the valley to go to other schools before this becomes a priority, and something that we can make happen? What other ways can we raise money to make this happen? Let’s figure this out soon before we lose half of the kids [and] before the kids that remain feel stuck because they have no choice.”

Waitsfield school Principal Kaiya Korb weighed in both with an email to the board and comments at the meeting. She invited board members to visit the school to see how mealtime works and to see the kitchen’s electric stove that no one would want in their home. “Our meals come delivered to us in the back of the personally owned truck of one of the food service staff employees – as do our dishes and the trays we eat upon. We have a sink that never passes health inspection,” she wrote in her email. “I appreciate that the kitchen does not feel as immediately pressing as a roof to a building, but this is also not just a ‘nice’ thing to add – I am concerned about the hygiene, efficiency and sustainability of our current food service with the facility we have.”

Korb later explained in an email to Waterbury Roundabout that the school initially was constrained by lack of municipal water and sewer service. Its reliance on a well and septic made a commercial kitchen not viable. That changed in 2012 when it was able to connect to municipal utilities but then a remodeling project wasn’t a priority as the school district worked on consolidating, then setting long-term facility plans, and then the pandemic. “If now is not the right time for this project, when and under what conditions will it be the right time?” she asked. 

With 13 board members present, the board voted 9-2 in favor. Fayston members Bishop and Dukette cast the no votes; LeGeros abstained; the chair did not vote. Waterbury representative Marlena Tucker-Fishman was absent.  

Built in the mid 1960s and last updated in the 1990s, Harwood Union High School is in need of millions of dollars of renovations. File photo by Lisa Scagliotti

The bigger picture for building needs  

The Waitsfield kitchen is just one item on a list of just over $3 million of projects for fiscal year 2024 which begins in July. As LeGeros pointed out in the kitchen discussion, the three-year project list totals over $10 million. 

“There is nothing on the list that is not needed,” Daigle said as the list was projected onto a large screen. 

The costliest item on the list is a three-year $1 million phased plan to replace the roof on Harwood Union High School. Work began last summer with the replacement of the middle school roof. This year’s portion would replace the section over the gym, auditorium and art areas for an estimated cost of $452,300 another nearly $600,000 of work is on the list for the following two years. 

Other big-ticket items in the first year include upgrades to heating and ventilation controls at Crossett Brook Middle School for $161,000; roof replacement at Fayston for $95,000 and another $85,000 there to resurface the outdoor basketball court. Brookside Primary School projects include $161,000 for window replacement, $100,000 to reconstruct the rear entrance structure (just a placeholder value awaiting an updated cost from engineers) and $100,000 for the first year of a three-year $2 million phased heating-ventilation upgrade. Another $250,000 line item would replace fluorescent light fixtures in all of the schools. 

The board was asked to sign off only on the FY24 project list. Any of the projects over $40,000 would be brought to the board to approve specific contractor bids before they move forward. Daigle explained that he first needs to solicit bids for the three dozen projects listed in the column for FY24. 

LeGeros asked Estler about the fact that the three-year list totals over $10 million while the Maintenance Reserve Fund has only $4.5 million in it after adding the nearly $700,000 surplus that voters approved for maintenance on Town Meeting Day. The fund typically is replenished with unspent funds from prior years’ budgets and that amount has dropped from $1 million or more annually. 

“What are we getting ourselves into?” he asked. 

“The risk is that [this year’s list] is a large percentage of our maintenance reserve,” she acknowledged.  

If surpluses in future years are small, the district may need to specifically budget for capital projects, she suggested. Ultimately, a bond would likely be needed. 

Because the building project topic was on the board’s meeting agenda for discussion, Chair Kristen Rodgers noted that the group could not vote to approve the year-one list as Daigle had hoped. After some discussion, the board took a straw poll where they indicated they supported the list and they agreed to give it an official vote at the special meeting set for April 4 to review the Crossett Brook Middle School co-principal hiring decision. 

Bond discussion on the horizon

The broader issue of building upgrades and maintenance was addressed at the start of the meeting. Daigle reminded the board that in 2016, the district had $19 million in deferred maintenance projects and costs generally increase by 4% annually. One example: heating and ventilation upgrades to the Harwood facility in 2016 were estimated around $400,000. Today, the cost is expected to be $1.6 million, Daigle said. “A lot of things have changed in that world,” starting with industry standards, he said. “And the cost of materials and labor has gone up exponentially.” 

Superintendent Mike Leichliter emphasized that the circumstances are not unique to Harwood. “This is a problem across the state,” he said. 

He noted how the state government has not chipped in to help fund school-building projects in over a decade but that state education officials are now doing surveys and assessments of the overall school facility needs throughout Vermont and potential ways to help pay for needed repairs. “But this is not going to be resolved anytime in the next six months,” he said. 

So, while following the action at the state level, Leichliter said he wants the administration and board to discuss whether to put a new construction bond proposal together for voters to consider and what the timing for that might be. 

Voters in November 2021 rejected a nearly $60 million bond that was focused on renovations to Harwood and an expansion at Crossett Brook Middle School in order to move all of the district’s seventh- and eighth-graders to Crossett. 

Leichliter said he would like to see a community engagement plan as part of the process to put a new bond proposal together in time for the November 2024 election ballot.