The district’s oldest building is Shanahan Middle School in Lewis Center.
Gary Budzak | The Gazette
Gordon
As the Olentangy Local School District (OLSD) continues to grow, the district must continually project its capital needs as existing buildings continue to age and newer facilities begin to add years. During Tuesday’s meeting of the OLSD Board of Education, Director of Business Management and Facilities Dr. Jeff Gordon updated the board on what the district will face in the decades to come.
“We’ve had unprecedented inflation that has happened since 2019 to today’s numbers, and our existing buildings have continued to age,” Gordon said at the top of his presentation.
According to Gordon, the average age of the district’s school buildings is 20 years old, although he noted that without the district’s oldest building in Shanahan Middle School being factored in, the average drops to 18 years old. He added that while “quite a few updates” were done to Shanahan around 2006, even those updates are beginning to age.
“The other thing that’s happened since we did our first assessment in 2013 is one of our biggest numbers at that time was asphalt because a lot of our buildings were newer and we were starting to age,” Gordon said. “So, as we did the progression for our capital planning going out, the age progression, we had things that would come on. So, our first five years, the second five years, now you’re 15 years out, and then to 20, you would see increases throughout the plan. With this one, now we’re far enough out that those 15 buildings that were built starting in 2000-2010, the older ones are 23 years old, and the newest ones are 13 years old.”
Specifically, Gordon identified the mechanical elements of buildings as areas that are aging out and will need to be replaced, representing a significant portion of the spending the district will do on facilities in the years to come.
“You hope to get 20 (years of life) on mechanicals,” he noted. “Some will go sooner; some will go a little later —our roofs and a lot of those big cost items. So, you’ll see as we go through, some of those things are really beginning to add up and are becoming the biggest chunk of what we’ll need to maintain our facilities going forward.”
Discussing specific numbers over the life of the 20-year plan, Gordon said the cost for asphalt and concrete repairs is projected at $22 million, $53 million for roofing and building envelope repairs, and $110 million for technology.
Gordon said, “You can see these costs have really jumped up … Those numbers have really changed. Asphalt, I think, and busing were some of the biggest (costs) previously, and others have now caught up and are starting to bypass that.”
In total, Gordon went on to say the district is looking at approximately $402 million in spending over the 20 years of the capital plan, noting the estimate is in “2023 dollars” to account for the inflation rates captured since 2019.
Following the presentation, Board President Kevin O’Brien praised the district’s efforts to project so many years out, saying, “Do we know how many other districts do a 20-year capital plan? I think it’s fantastic because it gives us a lot of visibility and the ability to be deliberate and thoughtful in our planning to actually try to age this thing out. The longer you go, you’re going to have more variability because you’re making assumption on assumption and compounding it. But I think it’s great to have a 20-year plan.”
Gordon said he has not found many capital plans of similar length as he’s researched what other districts are doing, although he added that not all districts have the same necessity if they’re not experiencing advanced growth in their respective schools.
Reach Dillon Davis at 740-413-0904. Follow him on Twitter @DillonDavis56.
