1/26/17

The New COMPREHENSIVE Facilities Process and the Expert's Solution

A new comprehensive facilities process for the high school is underway. The process was first presented on December 13 and approved by the D200 School Board at its meeting on Dec. 22.

While internal stakeholders clearly need to be involved in answering these questions, the administration recommended undertaking a process that would also more broadly and deeply involve community residents and community partners. The Board agreed and approved a resolution charging administrators with “establishing a community engagement and outreach committee to review previous processes, make recommendations, and strengthen community partnerships pursuant to District goals related to equity, academic programming needs, facilities to support those needs, and finances, in order to ensure that the District meets the educational needs of the next generation of learners.” Administrators are planning to make recommendations to the Board in January regarding creating the committee. (SOURCE)
The first step is the creation of a "Launch Team" that will work to determine the desired attributes and qualifications for the members of the Community Engagement and Outreach Committee and the process by which those committee members will be selected.  The Launch Team includes school faculty and staff as well as community residents known have supported both the Vote No and Vote Yes campaigns.

The new process will be one that includes not just pools, locker rooms and performing arts spaces but goes further and looks at the instructional needs of the next generation of learners and how the facilities should be altered to meet those needs.

NOW back to the topic of the SWIMMING POOL situation at OPRFHS!

Pragmatic Solutions recently submitted an opinion piece published in the Wednesday Journal titled "The Expert's Pool Solution" (LINK) to advocate that the high school should go back and adopt recommendations in the report by Stantec Consulting issued in March 2013.  Stantec Consulting is a renowned engineering and design firm that was commissioned by the D200 School Board in 2012 to complete an in-depth study of the pool situation at OPRFHS.  Their report (linked HERE) concluded that the best solution, given the constraints of the land-locked campus at OPRFHS, a single 8-lane, 25-yard standard high school competition pool in the East Pool site, expanding into the South Gym as needed.