Posted 1:44 am Friday, April 17, 2009
TISD Trustees OK Guaranteed Price For Construction At Two Schools
By MEGAN MIDDLETON
Staff Writer
Staff Writer
Tyler ISD trustees unanimously approved a Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP) of $20,884,033 from Denson Construction Company Inc. for construction of the new Jones-Boshears school at their meeting Thursday night.
The new campus, which will be located along Chandler Highway near Loop 323, will combine Mattie Jones Elementary School and the St. Louis School-Wayne D. Boshears Center for Exceptional Programs facility that serves special needs students.
"We're thrilled that our numbers came in within our budget," TISD Superintendent Dr. Randy Reid told trustees. "We had a tremendous number of bidders."
Tim Loper, director of facilities at TISD, told trustees there was "a lot of competitiveness in the bids."
"I'm really excited about the cost," Loper said. "We had great participation in the bids ... I'm happy. I'm ready to get started."
The Jones-Boshears school is one of five new schools TISD is building as part of the $124.9 million November bond election. TISD also is building schools to replace Clarkston, Griffin, Orr and Woods elementary schools.
To speed construction, the civil/site utility packages of the new Jones-Boshears campus were separated from the building GMP. Denson Construction Company's GMP for the civil/site utility packages of $1,692,588 was approved by the TISD school board at its regular meeting in March.
The item approved at Thursday's meeting was the GMP for the rest of the construction process.
"A great amount of the site work is already under way," Reid said. "It is incredible the amount of work that has been done in a short amount of time."
The site work should be completed by the end of April, and then work on the foundation for the building will begin, the superintendent has said.
According to previous information presented to trustees, one side of the new Jones-Boshears campus will be single-story and contain classrooms for the Boshears students. The other side of the campus is a two-story, 500-student elementary school for the Jones students. The campus also contains shared spaces, such as the cafeteria.
The district plans to open most of the new schools from the 2008 bond program in August 2010. The opening of the new Griffin Elementary School likely will be delayed because of site acquisition issues, Reid said earlier this week.
NEW ROAD
The school board also unanimously approved a bid for more than $576,000 from JRJ Paving, LP for the construction of a new road at Hubbard Middle School designed to relieve traffic congestion for the school and surrounding neighborhood. The total cost of the project is more than $666,000. The additional cost is for testing, survey/layout and owner's contingency.
The new road will cut across the back portion of the property and stretch from Copeland Road to Chad Drive. The project includes a bus drop-off area and parking lot with sidewalks and ADA (American Disabilities Act)- related routes.
Reid said traffic congestion has been a problem for many years at the school, which has about 900 students.
The road is expected to be ready for the start of the 2009-10 school year. Work could start on the project before summer begins, according to discussion at Thursday's meeting.
The project will be paid for using additional funds the district has as the result of increased enrollment and a change in the targeted revenue TISD received from the state.
OTHER ITEMS
The board also approved buying 16 wireless laptop carts for John Tyler and Robert E. Lee high schools for more than $639,000.
Each cart will be equipped with 30 laptops and can be used to provide for testing needs and as additional computers for student use in classrooms.
"Wireless laptop carts, in high schools especially, enable us to better utilize our technology throughout the district," Reid told the board. "This enables the carts of computers to go to the rooms that they're needed as opposed to a full laboratory where they sit and take up space and we can't use for a classroom."
He said one of the biggest reasons the district wants to push forward with wireless laptop carts is because of online testing on the horizon.
Reid said having these laptops will allow students to sample online-only End of Course exams, which will replace the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test in 2011 for high school students.
Based on the number of students at each high school campus, John Tyler will receive seven carts and Lee will receive nine carts. Funding will come from E-rate funds the district has received.
The laptops will have the same accident warranty protection and Computrace anti-theft software protection that the district's teacher laptops have, John Orbaugh, director of technology at TISD, told the board.
The board also approved: 2008-09 amended budget; gifts and donations; date to conduct the official canvass for the May 9 school trustee election and special election; Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) localized policy update 84; purchase of nine new buses for the 2009-10 school year; striping and seal coating at various campuses; radio system upgrade; painting bids for Hubbard Middle School, Robert E. Lee High School and Administration Building exteriors; pre-demolition asbestos abatement at Clarkston Elementary; and Moore MST Magnet School technology upgrade.
The board did not vote on an item to install electronic marquees at Bell, Ramey and Jack elementary schools after the superintendent said more research on the item was needed.
