Bond Ethics - FAQ's

The next series of blogs regarding Bond Election Ethics will be in the form of frequently asked questions that we have compiled through our experience with assisting in school bond elections. These questions assume that you are the Superintendent of the school district and these questions are being asked of you. Of course the safe answer would be that you should always check with your legal counsel, but a general knowledge of the ethics rules will help you stay out of trouble. Question 1 - The District is about to call for a bond election. The School Board President asks if the Board should appoint a Political Action Committee. What should you tell him/her? Answer- Absolutely not. The Board should never take any action in regards to a group that will be participating in and paying for political advertising. Political Action Committees should form by themselves. Usually these groups will form naturally through the community involvement during the planning process. Question 2 - A teacher in the District who is also a member of "Citizens for School Improvements" Political Action Committee, wants to know if she can talk about the upcoming bond election at work. What can she say if another employee or parents ask her about the election? Answer 2 - Teachers have the right to express their views when asked. However, they have to use common sense when doing so and be careful not to let their views turn into any type of staged conversation or campaigning. Question 3 - You (as Superintendent of Schools) are giving a presentation about the upcoming bond election. At the end of the presentation a member of the audience asks you how you feel about the election. What should you say? Or more important, what should you not say? Answer 3 - Any factual statement can be made at any time regarding the bond election without violating the Texas Election Code. All political advertising, whether in support of or against the bond election, is considered advocacy and is strictly prohibited. Use caution when using printed materials as handouts. Do not stray from the factual material.

Bond Issues in Texas

We have just recently been through an election process in the State of Texas for funding school capital improvements. Most major building projects in the state are funded through local Independent School Districts (ISD) by issuing the sale of bonds. The bonds must be approved by the voters in the ISD in which they reside. There were a total of 43 ISD's with elections and 33 passed, a 76.7% passage rate. The total dollar amount of funding that was called was $835,360,000 and the total amount passed was $633,070,000. In ISD's with less than 5000 students, the number of bond issues called was 38 and 29 passed. Large ISD's with more than 5000 students, the number of bond issues called was 5 and 4 passed. Even in these difficult economic times, the need for improving school facilities continues. It is apparent that the majority of the voters in the state recognized the need and said yes to improving their local school facilities. State law will only allow bond elections to occur at standard election dates in May and November, so the next round of bonds will be coming during the national election. This may be a difficult time to get voters to say yes to increasing their taxes, time will tell. Michael D. King AIA

Energy Efficient Building Envelopes

With many areas having adopted the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code, there are new considerations being evaluated in wall construction. Many climates are required to have a layer of continuous insulation in their exterior walls to meet this code. If your schools are constructed using either metal studs or masonry, the insulation between the studs or in the cells of the masonry is not considered continuous and an additional layer must be added outside of this wall.

An alternative wall system gaining traction in some areas is ICF - Insulated Concrete Forms. This wall system uses two layers of foam that work both as the formwork for a concrete wall and for the layer of continuous insulation. The foam forms can easily be cut to place electrical conduit or small pipes. A masonry veneer can still be applied to the exterior face of the wall. The most common interior finish is gypsum board.

There are several benefits to this wall system. It has a higher R-value than other standard wall systems, thus making the envelope more energy efficient. It is also much faster to construct, which saves time and money during construction. ICF is also designed to be a load-bearing system, which eliminates the need for any structural beams and columns around the perimeter of the building, also a direct cost savings. A disadvantage of this system is the increased wall thickness, which is typically 1'-6". This increased wall thickness translates into a larger building footprint. However, even with this increase, the cost savings generated by the benefits listed above result in this wall system still being very comparable in $/SF to a masonry wall system.

School Design Standards

Education in the State of Texas is governed by the Texas Education Agency (TEA). The TEA adopted school facility design standards in 1994 and then updated and revised the standards in 2004. Essentially the standards set out minimum sizes of classrooms and other spaces for the grade levels. As an example, kindergarten and 1st grade classrooms are sized at a minimum of 800sf for 22 students. TEA has limited the class size of students in K - 4th grade at a 22 to 1 ratio. If you are in a smaller school district and you don't have 22 students per room, you can use the factor of 36sf per student to get to your minimum room size. I usually don't recommend using the square foot factor per student since it limits you to that number of students. If the class size grows you would have to add additional classrooms and teachers, rather than expanding into the rooms you have. Grade levels 2 - 12 are sized at 700sf per classroom and if smaller size rooms are appropriate, you would use the factor of 32sf in the lower grade levels and 28sf in the secondary level. TEA felt it was necessary to set the minimum standards and unfortunately this is the size rooms that we see end up being provided. These minimum sizes may meet your needs just fine, but in most cases we find that even these rooms are too small to meet the needs of teachers and the number of students that are squeezed into the space. It is imperative that you communicate to your design professional how many students are being planned for in the classrooms. Does an 800sf kindergarten room meet your needs in how you teach your curriculum? Only you can answer that question. If it is not discussed, you may end up with the classrooms being too small. I would be interested to know what other states have set out minimum design standards and how they compare.

ADA Compliance - Part Two

Continuing the discussion on ADA compliance, it's important for us all to understand the concept of universal design. This concept embraces not only the recognition that we must make our buildings accessible, but takes it a step further to do more to eliminate barriers. For example, designing ramps in place of steps even if the ramp is not required to meet the letter of the law.

I asked in the previous blog "how accessible is your school?". One exercise that I do with my students when I am lecturing on accessibility is to borrow a wheelchair and take them around the building we are in to have them experience first hand what it is like. It's a real eye opening experience for most. The simple act of pulling up to and opening a door is enough for them to realize why the ADA is so specific about this operation. You must have 18" of clearance on the side of the door if it opens towards you, the force to pull the door open cannot exceed 5ft/lbs, the handle must be the type that does not require a grasping and twisting motion and the door must have a clear opening of 32" min.

One common violation that I see is the placement of room signage. Often times it is attached to the door, which is not correct. In order for the signage to be in compliance it must be attached to the wall on the strike side of the door, mounted at 5ft to the center of the sign, contain the room name and number in braille, and be located no more than 8" from the door frame. This is so that a blind person can locate the room. If the door is in the open position, they would not be able to find the room number. Or if the signage is up too high to reach, again they would not be able to find the room.

Another common violation occurs when the lavatory for the handicap does not have the exposed plumbing lines covered under the fixture. The drain line and the water lines all must be covered with insulation. This is specified in order to protect the person in the wheelchair as they pull up to the lavatory so that their legs and feet are not injured by the exposed pipes.

One more item to be aware of is the side slope on sidewalks. The side slope cannot exceed a 2% grade on the width of the walk. Probably the most common injury for ambulatory people is loosing their balance and falling because of excessive side slope on walks.

Take universal design to heart. Tour your school campus and see what you can do to make your building more user friendly for all people.

Michael D. King AIA

ADA Compliance

The ADA (American With Disabilities Act) is not new legislation, it was put in effect over 20 years ago. Every school should have an action plan as to how to make their facilities handicap accessible. How accessible is your school?

There are 5 major components that lead towards making your facility accessible.
First, is there parking allocated for wheelchair access and is the path to the main entrance free from barriers? The designated handicap parking space must be at least 96" wide with a 60" access aisle adjacent to it. If you only have one h.c. parking space it must be designated as 'van accessible' and be 132" wide. The van space can be 96" wide if it has an adjacent access aisle of at least 96" wide. The pathway from the h.c. parking space must be accessible to the main entrance. No slopes of over 5% are allowed unless they are ramps. The ramps cannot slope over 8.33% (a one in twelve rise to run ratio) and must have handrails on both sides. The ramp cannot run more than 30' in the horizontal distance before having a level landing of at least 5'. There cannot be more than a 1/2" rise to overcome along the accessible path. For instance, if a tree root has caused the sidewalk to raise up and crack, if the rise is more than 1/2", it is considered to be a barrier.

Second, is the path of travel in the interior of the facility free from barriers? Access to all goods and services must be on an accessible path. Education is the service provided in the school, so all floors and all spaces must be accessible.

Third, are your restrooms accessible? All components of the restroom must be accessible. The ADA requires certain heights for the plumbing fixtures and at least one stall to be accessible (5'x5'). Mirrors, hand dryers and soap dispensers must be set at the appropriate height for the user of the facility. If you are building an addition to your school and it does not contain restrooms, then you must assure that accessible restrooms are available in the existing bldg. and that the restrooms are along an accessible pathway.

Fourth, are your drinking fountains accessible? ADA requires that drinking fountains be set at certain heights for the main users of the bldg and that they be located in pairs. One to be set at a lower height for wheelchair users and one set at a slightly higher elevation for those people that might have difficulty stooping over at the lower of the two fountains.

Fifth, are your public telephones accessible? This requirement is not difficult to comply with since the advent of mobile phones. But if you do have phones available to the public, one must be set at an accessible height.

These are simply the basic things you should be looking for to have an accessible facility. There are of course quite a few more items such as doors and door hardware that will make the interior pathway of the bldg accessible or not. If you do not have a plan in place to remove the barriers in your school, we highly recommend that you put one in place as soon as possible. More and more lawsuits are being filed every year by accessible advocates, and having a plan in place would greatly assist, should you be filed on.

Michael D. King AIA

Student Lockers, or Not

The issue as to whether to provide student lockers in high schools and middle schools is a conversation you should have with your design professional early in the planning stage of your project. It seems like a simple decision, but it will have ongoing implications of safety and security for your school.

We still see the majority of our clients requesting student lockers to be located down various corridors, much as we have been accustomed to seeing in schools for years. The difference being now, as opposed to say 15 years ago, is in the placement of the lockers. They can still be located down a corridor, but don't position them adjacent to exterior doors where it makes it easy for students to bring in contraband unseen. If lockers are grouped together in a specific area, do not extend the lockers above eye level so as to block the view of the monitor for that area.

We have had several school districts eliminate student lockers all together. The ongoing trouble of dealing with drugs and other paraphernalia has been the driving force to get rid of them. The solution has either been to make students carry all their books in a back pack or provide a second set of books located in the classroom. Of course, providing the second set of books has a monetary impact that has kept many schools from choosing this option. As school districts go this route, we see more teachers requesting some type of cabinet in the classroom to store or hang the back packs as students are carrying all their worldly possesions with them from class to class.

There is a third option I believe that we will see in the near future and that is the introduction of the iPad or other similar note books. As this technology becomes more readily available, standard hard cover books as we know them will become less attractive, thus eliminating the need for a locker. This won't happen quickly, I believe it will be a slow transition. And if this does occur, it brings up another issue as to the viability of libraries as we know them now. We'll save that discussion for another time though.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and issues/solutions to student lockers in your school.

Michael D. King AIA