At the December 20, 2016, Board of Education meeting, the Grandview Heights Schools Board of Education selected Frank Locker Educational Planning to help facilitate and guide conversations with the community regarding the district’s school buildings.
“Frank Locker is a nationally and internationally renowned expert in educational facilities planning, working with school districts, governments, and non-profits across the nation and world,” stated Eric Bode, member of the community-led Facilities Task Force, which helped district leaders make the recommendation to hire Locker. “We look forward to working with him to continue the conversations around the need to come up with a plan to address our aging school buildings.”
In 2015, Grandview Heights Schools began a comprehensive look into the current state of the district’s school buildings. The researched showed that the current reality with respect to deferred maintenance and capital improvements needed to address our facilities is estimated to be $44 million dollars - a staggering amount that will exceed the district’s existing facilities maintenance budget.
“Despite the hard work of our facilities crew, our school district faces real challenges with maintaining our aging school buildings, some of which are 100 years old, with plumbing, roofing, heating and cooling systems that are well beyond their lifespan,” stated Superintendent Andy Culp. “The costs continue to rise and are not going away, and are impacting the long-term financial health of the district.”
District leaders also acknowledge that the facilities assessment previously conducted by HPG has been informative, thorough, and accurate and will assist in the facilities planning work moving forward.
“We believe that the comprehensive facility assessment that HPG completed is thorough, valid, and reliable,” added Culp. “It will help inform the facility planning process moving forward and we are very pleased with the outcomes of this work.”
With the selection of a new educational planner, a new timeline is being created with community engagement remaining a top priority. We will continue to hold community meetings as well as building meetings and tours.
“Our commitment to engaging our community in a conversation regarding the challenges of our aging school buildings remains the same,” stated Board Member Jesse Truett. “Our goals have been and will continue to be that we have safe, modern and efficient school buildings for our students and community.”
We are in the process of creating a calendar of community meetings that will include dates, times, and locations. Once the calendar is complete, we will share the information with the community via email and in our district newsletter.
Please find attached various articles and information authored by Frank Locker, Ph.D., regarding facility planning.
For more information and updates, visit our Facility Planning page on the district website at www.ghcsd.org , email [email protected], or call 614-485-4015.