I was reading through District 150’s Master Facilities Planning Committee Final Recommendations, and I discovered their decisions are determined by the outcome of a facilities analysis they did. Here’s how they did it:

First, they split up the committee into four subcommittees based on high school attendance area. The four subcommittees were:

• Manual – Dave Ryon, Steve Morris, & Lillie Foreman
• Peoria High – Ed Berry, Guy Cahill, Mary Spangler
• Woodruff – Dave Henebry, Cindy Fischer, Thea Robinson
• Richwoods – Ray Lees, Mary Ardapple, Herschel Hannah

Then, the report states:

The committee decided to evaluate each facility based on their respective attributes relating to several primary issues: 1) Health-Life-Safety, 2) Operational Costs and 3) Educational Programs. This assessment was then followed by tours of each school in the District. The Committee was divided into four groups to visit schools in each of the four high school feeder areas. The results of the preliminary analysis were then reevaluated and modified based on on-site observations of existing conditions.

So, at the end of the report, you find three spreadsheets with the “raw data” of their scores. Each of those “primary issues” had several factors the committee members had to evaluate. For example, under “Health-Life-Safety,” some of the factors included site size, building size, building age, building structure, hazard protection, etc.

However, what I didn’t find was any objective basis for the scores they assigned.

For example, on the “Health-Life-Safety” spreadsheet, they have to give a score for the age of the building. One would expect this would have some sort of clear-cut, objective standard — maybe “5” for 25 years old or newer, “4” for 25-50 years old, etc. It’s almost that consistent, but there are a few anomalies. It appears that any building built before 1940 received a “1” — except for Woodruff High School, which got a “2,” even though it was built in 1936, the same year as Von Steuben Middle School, which received a “1.” All the schools built between 1941 and 1979 received a “2,” except for Richwoods and Manual. Richwoods (1955) got a “3,” and Manual (1961) inexplicably got a “4.” If there isn’t consistency in this, the most objective category on the list, how are we to evaluate their scores on the truly subjective categories, such as “healthfulness of lighting”?

Another curiosity is the score given for “Energy and Efficiency” of the building, systems, and equipment. Every primary, middle, and high school in Peoria got a “1” in these categories except for two: Glen Oak School got a “3” and Lincoln got a “5.” Are we really to believe that Charter Oak (built in 1979) and Irving school (built in 1898) have exactly the same (low) efficiency rating?

Remember, these scores and others like them form the basis of the district’s $120,000,000 building plan decision. Would you base a financial decision that large on these measurements?

It’s also worth noting that, given the information we have in this facilities report, it doesn’t appear that any experts were called in — for instance, an architect, or fire marshal, or HVAC specialist like Energy Pro Heating & Cooling — so one wonders again on what basis the committee assigned scores to things like “flexibility of building,” or “hazard protection,” or “healthfulness of HVAC.” In other words, they’re giving their opinion on several items for which they don’t have the necessary expertise. I could just as easily fill out these forms with my own opinions and they would be as valid (except on those items that deal with educational issues, on which they are in fact experts). They should have consulted actual experts such as Sitton Mechanical for these.

Yet, based on this “analysis,” the report confidently concludes (emphasis mine): “The District has or will soon have the necessary match of funds derived both from available restricted reserves and the sale of a health-life-safety bond (for the replacement of a minimum of two and as many as six buildings the cost of which to remediate is greater than the cost of replacement).”

The report gives no justification for the statement in bold.

Nowhere in the report do they give a breakdown of what it would cost to renovate/expand the current buildings versus what it would cost to do a new construction (including acquisition, demolition, legal, and other hidden costs). They also didn’t state how they would protect construction workers who are injured in scaffolding accidents. There’s no feasibility study. All they’ve really done is identified which schools they feel (subjectively) are in greatest need of repair. That’s no basis upon which to start tearing down schools and building new ones on different sites.

It’s easy to see why the school district is on the state’s financial watch list when it makes big-budget decisions on such scanty analysis. The school board should throw out this committee’s report and try again, this time with some objective measurements and a real feasibility study. Oh, and community involvement.

In fact, maybe they could learn something from this report by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Among many other valuable pieces of information, it includes this warning that the district is already learning the hard way: “A study conducted behind closed doors does not consider all viewpoints or build trust and support from within the community.”