Board of Education looks forward to facility planning

With six schools throughout the Mountain Brook district, it comes as no surprise that there are expenses with the general upkeep. To prepare the community with plans for schools, Tommy Prewitt, facilities director, gave a presentation to highlight upcoming projects at the Board of Education meeting on Oct. 17.

Over 20 years ago, the Mountain Brook school system brought in professionals to provide a written assessment of the facilities and develop a long-range maintenance plan, Prewitt said, and now they are looking to continue the upkeep on the schools with additional planning. 

After looking at all schools, there are six main components up for replacements and repairs: resurfacing of the tennis courts, which operate on a seven-year replacement cycle and would cost $90,000; replacing the high school track, which operates on a 12-year replacement cycle, and would cost $750,000; repainting various classrooms and hallways, which operates on a 10-year cycle, and would cost $500,000; flooring and carpet upkeep or replacement, which operates on a 15-year replacement cycle, and would cost $528,000; HVAC replacement, which operates on a 20-year replacement cycle, and would cost $3.1 million; and roofing replacements, which operate on a 25-year replacement cycle and would cost $3.1 million. 

The aim is to take care of these issues in the near future, but Prewitt also mentioned that if a school didn’t need something, they weren’t going to work on it. “Just because it’s on the schedule doesn’t mean it has to be replaced,” he said. These repairs and replacements come after a summer of enhancing numerous school facilities, many of which were funded by the schools’ PTO. 

The Board of Education also observed a presentation which highlighted the success of Mountain Brook’s students within the ACT and SAT programs. 

Last year, there were at least 30 percent more Spartan students who surpassed the national average in both the reading and the science portions of the Aspire exam. Seniors scored an average of 6.3 points higher than the national average and 8 points higher than the state average on the ACT exam. Of students who opted to take the SAT test, their scores averaged more than 450 points higher than the national average. 

In addition, during the meeting on Oct. 17, the Board of Education:

• Reviewed the Student Incident Report for 2015-2016, which showed similar pattern to previous years with relatively low levels of violence and that 100 percent of restrained students had IEPs.
• Recognized Laura Hydinger, the new Executive Director of ALL IN Mountain Brook
• Recognized Adam Johnson, a Mountain Brook Junior High teacher recently named one of the Top 100 Flip Educators in the world. 
• Recognized Mountain Brook Junior High teacher Pam Pugh for her work with the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development and with the junior high.
• Recognized Susan Farlow, high school head tennis coach, for her work with the school and for her nomination for the 2016 National Federation of State High School Associations.
• Recognized high school students Sean Fredella and Brett Lewis for being selected to speak at the first ever TED-Ed Weekend in New York City this December. 
• Recognized the PSAT National Merit Semifinalists and the National Merit Commended Students.
• Acknowledged that the financial statements and bank reconciliations are not currently available due to the end of the fiscal year. 
• Approved personnel recommendations relating to substitute positions. 
• Approved remaining surplus to be discarded. 
• Accepted the bid of Axon Industries, LLC for lawn maintenance within the district. 

This Friday, Oct. 21, Mountain Brook High School will celebrate its 50th Homecoming Anniversary starting with an open house for alumni from 1 to 2:30 p.m., followed by the Homecoming parade at 2:30 p.m. and the football game at 7 p.m.

The next Board of Education meeting will take place on Nov. 14 at 3:30 p.m. at Mountain Brook Elementary.