MOUNT VERNON —Preparations for a facility master plan at Mount Vernon City Schools will soon begin, superintendent Bill Seder announced at Monday’s board of education meeting.
Seder announced at the February regular board meeting the district would access all buildings, while collecting useful data to see what steps might need to be taken for the health of the district and buildings.
The process outlined by consulting group Fanning Howey is Collect, Connect, Create and Complete.
Discussion of master facility planning improvements for MVCS is not new.
Mount Vernon City Schools created a district facility grade card in 2018 indicating repairs were needed in at least one area in every building. The school system also conducted an online facility “thought exchange” where 612 participants similarly expressed a need for repairs across buildings.
In 2019, the district directed this energy to the Education Gateway project, before the COVID-19 pandemic stymied master planning efforts.
Two of the six elementary buildings are over a century old. A number of building are more than 50 years old.
Seder also pointed to the expected 1,201 housing units in the district, which could potentially add another 200 students.
The plan is to work with Fanning Howey to create a facilities advisory committee, filled with community members, parents, teachers and administrative staff.
The district has previously used Fanning Howey for other projects, so the architect is not new to the district.
Several committees would be created for this step, one of which is a facilities core committee. This is a small advisory group of six to eight people, including the superintendent, one to two board members, the facilities director, treasurer, and one to two community leaders.
A larger group, the facilities advisory committee, would bring more of the community into the process.
The FAC would have 40 to 80 people, ranging from administrators, board members (two at maximum), teachers, parents, community leaders, business leaders and school clubs/organizations.
Seder expects the master plan to be complete at least a year from now but the process will determine the timeframe.