City Council

CITY OF FREDERICKSBURG, VIRGINIA HON. MARY KATHERINE GREENLAW, MAYOR HON. WILLIAM C. WITHERS, JR., VICE -MAYOR, WARD TWO CITY COUNCIL HON. KERRY P. DEVINE, AT-LARGE HON. MATTHEW J. KELLY, AT-LARGE HON. JASON N. GRAHAM, WARD ONE HON. DR. TIMOTHY P. DUFFY, WARD THREE Council Chambers, 715 Princess Anne Street HON. CHARLIE L. FRYE, JR., WARD FOUR Fredericksburg, Virginia 22401 Special Council Work Session March 20, 2019 School Capacity Report The Council of the City of Fredericksburg, Virginia held a work session on Wednesday, March 20, 2019, beginning at 7:00 p.m. in the City Hall Conference Room. Council Present. Mayor Mary Katherine Greenlaw, Presiding. Vice-Mayor William C. Withers. Councilors Timothy P. Duffy, Charlie L. Frye, Jr. (7:05), Jason N. Graham and Matthew J. Kelly. Council Absent. Councilor Kerry P. Devine (sick). Also Present. City Manager Timothy J. Baroody, Assistant City Manager Mark Whitley, Assistant City Manager Doug Fawcett, City Attorney Kathleen A. Dooley, Business Development Manager Angela Freeman and Clerk of Council Tonya B. Lacey. Others Present. Doug Westmoreland of Moseley Architects and Susan Kooch of K&C Associated, LLC. School Capacity Report. Mayor Greenlaw began by reading a statement discussing school facilities planning processes, the comprehensive plan, capital improvements plan, current near term proposal, and next steps. (See attachment for more details). Mr. Whitley reviewed the FY2020 budget and CIP process. (See attachment for more details). Mr. Westmoreland and Ms. Kooch presented a PowerPoint and he began with the credentials of both Dr. Carl Chafin and Susan Kooch of K&C Associated, LLC, they also discussed the Enrollment projection methodology, the background of the facilities study for years 2012, 2014, and 2017, as well as the 2018 design capacity options study. Councilor Duffy disclosed that he was an Assistant Principal at James Monroe High School but he was able to participate objectively, fairly and in the public interest. 1  Councilor Frye disclosed that his spouse is an employee for the Fredericksburg City Public Schools but he was able to participate objectively, fairly and in the public interest. Mayor Greenlaw asked a question that has been of concern for the citizens and that was whether the core facilities, like the cafeteria, of Lafayette Upper Elementary was designed to handle an expansion and Mr. Westmoreland said it was. Councilor Graham asked if the projected numbers took into consideration the students that may be generated from planned development and Ms. Kooch cautioned using student generation ratios based on housing unless there had been experience with them. She said you would not want to build a school based on those numbers and then not be able to fill it. She explained that the numbers she used were strictly from live births and kindergarten numbers. Mr. Westmoreland said they took into consideration the proposed developments in their 2017 numbers. Councilor Graham asked about the kindergarten projections and the actuals for 2018. He wanted to know if this was an anomaly because the projected was 288 and the actuals jumped to 340 and Ms. Kooch explained that one year was not a trendsetter she said it could be a blip or there may be something that needed to be watched. She highly cautioned using one year for reviewing the data. Councilor Graham said his concern was the 2017 recommendation that a new school would be require due to capacity increases and he asked if that changed off of growth projections. Mr. Westmoreland explained there were a number of ways to add capacity, he said 2014 and 2017 studies recommended building a new elementary school. He cautioned that in 2014 it appeared that Hugh Mercer was going to be the bubble and in 2017 it appeared Walker-Grant was going to be the bubble. Mr. Westmoreland explained the beauty of a new school it would allow the moving of grades up from Hugh Mercer or down from Walker-Grant. Mr. Graham said he liked that solution and Mr. Westmoreland said he still thinks that is a good solution. Councilor Withers asked the challenges of adding on to Walker-Grant because of the cafeteria and Mr. Westmoreland said the biggest challenges was the cafeteria and they talked about building a stage off the gym and absorb the stage into the cafeteria and use it for cafeteria services. Councilor Kelly asked how they adjust for the changes in demographics when the City has become transient. Ms. Kooch said they look at historical data and it is accounted for in their data. Councilor Frye added that there were some neighborhoods that were finalized and there was an influx in refugees and he asked if the numbers showed an influx. Ms. Kooch said she did not see any spikes or drops during the study and nothing that showed and influx. Councilor Frye asked Mr. Westmoreland whether he considered the original Walker-Grant and Mr. Westmoreland said he did the Walker-Grant study and they looked at the original Walker- 2 Grant and he said it was a beautiful building but it has some large challenges. It sits in a flood plain, and he remembered doing an estimate and it was a large estimate. He said there were some classrooms but not a lot of useable space because it sits in a flood plain and it was on the historic registry. Mr. Westmoreland said in order to meet code and bring it to standards it would have a very large price tag. Councilor Duffy asked if the growth of Fredericksburg change the return on the birth to school student ratio. He also added that he was concerned how an expansion would function at Walker-Grant because there were many challenges there such as the locker rooms and small hallways to name a few. Councilor Duffy said even adding onto Upper Lafayette could be problematic. He added that by looking at the expansions as a capacity issue they lose site on the programming issues. Mr. Westmoreland explained that because the City’s school division was so small all the kindergarten go to one school and this makes him question whether 2nd graders should be separated from first graders. He said this is a question for the educators whether this is appropriate. He said a 1,000 student elementary school was a large school. Councilor Graham asked if there were plans for an expanded nurse office with the expansion. Mr. Westmoreland noted that what had done was very conceptual and there had been no input from the school board. Councilor Graham asked if the playground would have to be expanded and Mr. Westmoreland said it would. Mr. Graham asked about the capacity of Hugh Mercer and Mr. Westmoreland went into great detail about how the capacity may change from year to year based on curriculum. Councilor Kelly asked how the renovations at Walker-Grant Center saved space by moving all administrators into one building and Mr. Westmoreland noted that much of the space gained was conference room and office space. Councilor Frye asked if additional special needs kids were enrolled would that take the capacity up and Mr. Westmoreland said it does because you can only have so many in a classroom. Mayor Greenlaw read a question that was submitted by citizen, Jon Gerlach, no interactive community engagement was built into the current School Expansion Project design, such as charrettes, stakeholders and community committees and census building workshops were part of the Mosely projects and he wanted to know why they were not. Mr. Westmoreland responded and said they do get input but they were not in the design phase yet and the plans were only conceptual. Mayor Greenlaw allowed Dr. Caitie Finlayson, Assistant Professor of Geography to speak on behalf of the community. Dr. Finlayson asked several questions and she started by asking Ms. Kooch how they projected or estimated the value of the kindergarten enrollment for the future. Ms. 3 Kooch explained that they pull down ten years of live birth data and she looks at either a three or five year average to project the births going forward, in this case they used the five year average. Secondly, she looks at how many actually walk through the door for kindergarten. She said it was all formula driven. Dr. Finlayson asked Ms. Kooch if she ran a correlation analysis to see if the births five years previously correlated with the kindergarten enrollment and Ms. Kooch said she did not run a statistical analysis on the data but she did a trend analysis based on the cohorts, but she does look back further than five years. Dr. Finlayson asked Ms. Kooch why she believes starting with births five years previously alone was the most important predictor of kindergarten enrollment and Ms. Kooch explained that it was a standard procedure for enrollment projections. She said as she go out and work with other counties and cities in the State many do the projections themselves and every five to ten years they have someone else come in and update. Ms. Kooch said this was a best practice for her and her partner because it is a consistent leading indicator. Ms. Kooch also said if the City wanted to have Ms. Finlayson do the analysis make sure to have her do it for at least five years. Dr. Finlayson asked of Ms. Kooch if she does an analysis of the accuracy of her model by looking at migrations, population etc. and she said statistically those numbers are in the cohort data. She said for her practice the method they use is their best method and they project with different variables. Dr. Finlayson asked what method they use and what do they feel is the best metric and which one they reflected in the City’s model. Ms. Kooch said they used the growth model for the City because there is definitely a growth issue in the City. Ms. Kooch said from her experience and the model she created and her partners experience and the model he created they have melded the two together. She said every county and city is unique so that is the reason they have five different types they use. Dr. Finlayson asked if Ms. Kooch could explained why her enrollment projections for 2019 were expected to go down and Ms. Kooch explained that she was basing that off of the 2017 numbers which were available at the time but she said in her new projections from December that number was up to 340. Mr. Westmoreland said he had spoken with Dr. Melton and he said he would like to get enrollment projections based on the September 30 numbers from this year which is the timeframe of when you do projections. He said most school jurisdictions do formal enrollment projections every five years and the City has been more diligent than any other system at getting outside projections. 4  There was continued discussion on the enrollments by grades and why the numbers were going down and not increasing and Ms. Kooch was explaining the number goes down because the students are moving through the system. Ms. Finlayson asked if they have ever had a time on any of their project where they have had the public involved this early in a project and Mr. Westmoreland she he could not think of a time ever having the public involved this early. He said typically there are small study groups. Ms. Finlayson noted that in 2014 the recommendation was to build a new elementary school and she asked why that was not the recommendation today and Mr. Westmoreland said the recommendation of the facility study was to build a school for grades two through three and for the long term solution for capacity issues that is still the recommendation. He said the options that are proposed are to help until the city can afford to build. Councilor Frye asked the Council how they felt about the working group and Mayor Greenlaw said at a recent meeting they had the Presidents of the University of Mary Washington and Germanna Community College to discuss workforce education opportunities, they have talked about special needs children and she said it’s been valuable to have these discussions. Councilor Kelly said there needed to be a closer relationship with schools and Council because they are a large portion of the budget. He said to operate five schools would be a bigger part of the budget and it would be huge for a city the size of Fredericksburg. Councilor Kelly said these conversations between the schools and the Council have been long overdue. Vice-Mayor Withers and Councilor Duffy thanked the Council for serving on the Committee and the citizens for being engaged. Councilor Kelly asked Ms. Kooch how long she had been doing projections and if her projections have ever been significantly off the mark and she said she had been doing this for about 24 years and she has never had any complaints on her enrollment projections. She said they have repeat clients that continue to call them back. Adjournment. There being no further business to come before the Council at this time. Mayor Greenlaw declared the session officially adjourned at 9:33 p.m. _Tonya B. Lacey _______ Tonya B. Lacey Clerk of Council City of Fredericksburg 5