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School division releases 2026 capital asset plan, prioritizes fire-safety and preventive maintenance
Summary
Facilities staff presented a detailed Capital Asset Plan (CAP) for fiscal 2026 showing prioritized safety projects (fire alarms, boilers), preventive maintenance, and a multi-year forecasting tool intended to make maintenance spending more transparent.
Brian Davis, director of facility services, and facilities staff presented the division's capital asset plan for fiscal 2026 to the Finance Committee on Jan. 15, highlighting fire-alarm replacements, major preventative-maintenance projects and a multi-year forecast that organizes projects by priority and by school.
"The top 2 are fire alarms at Millbrook and James Wood...I'd like to replace those," Brian Davis said while walking the committee through the CAP document. He told members the document lists projects by safety and priority and then provides scopes of work and school-by-school breakdowns.
Nut graf: The CAP released to the committee is intended to help the board and the public understand why particular projects are prioritized, how funds are classified between operating, capital projects and construction funds, and how preventative maintenance and asset replacement are projected and scheduled.
Highlights from the CAP and facility discussion:
- Safety-first prioritization: the plan ranks projects by safety and legal compliance first (examples: fire-protection system replacements and other life-safety equipment), followed by urgency, then diminishment of efficiency/comfort items. Davis pointed to fire-alarm replacements at Millbrook High School and James Wood Middle School as the highest-priority safety items.
- Project examples and costs: the CAP lists plumbing fixtures at Armel and Sherando, a track resurface at James Wood High School, parking-lot work and circulation remedies at Bass-Hoover Elementary School to address queuing and capacity, and interior finishes at multiple schools. Davis said the total listed for division asset replacements in the book was roughly $14,000,798 (the document is a planning list, and Davis said he did not expect to receive the entire amount in a single year).
- Organization and transparency: Davis and other presenters emphasized the CAP's structure: the first section lists prioritized preventive-maintenance and replacement projects; the following pages include scope-of-work summaries, a three-year preventive-maintenance forecast and a list of projects in progress or recently completed. The staff said the full CAP will be posted to the division's BoardDocs site.
- Tools and cost estimating: presenters said they use standard industry tools for cost estimates (mentioning SchoolDude and RSMeans) and supplement estimates with local-cost reviews and architectural/engineering studies when needed.
Committee members praised the level of detail. One board member called the CAP "a great book" and noted the plan explains, for example, why older network cabling needs replacement (to move from 100Mbps to 1Gbps and beyond) and why flooring or asbestos abatement sometimes appears in scope descriptions. Another member said the CAP will be useful when constituents ask when specific projects will be completed.
Ending: Facilities staff asked the committee to review the CAP and direct further questions to the facilities office; staff said the book is intended to be a living document the board can use when making appropriation decisions and when explaining projects to the public.
