AOE official outlines staffing, planning and equity questions for relaunched school construction program

Bob Doniel, school facilities program manager at the Vermont Agency of Education, told the House Education committee on Feb. 14 that the agency has completed a statewide facilities assessment, launched a public-facing facilities dashboard and is preparing capital-planning and operations tools to support any future state school construction program.

Doniel said the position he holds was created by Act 72 and that his office has finished the inventory and assessment of school buildings statewide and is publishing those results on a public dashboard. "The link now to the public facing facilities dashboard is live," he said.

The work under Act 72, Doniel said, includes three additional pieces: a capital improvement plan template for districts, an operations-and-maintenance manual to encourage preventive maintenance (including options for districts without computerized maintenance management systems), and recommendations for facility-manager training and certification. He told the committee that a phase of the dashboard that will let districts build capital plans from the asset inventory is under development and "should be coming out within the next 2 months."

Why it matters: any future state-funded school construction aid will depend on materials, rules and eligibility criteria the agency establishes now. Doniel told members that those front-end materialsmaster planning requirements, minimum/maximum square-foot tables and a revised construction planning guidewill shape which projects are eligible and how projects are prioritized once construction dollars become available.

On staffing, Doniel said the agency currently has one person in his role and recommended adding two staff immediately to finish foundational work before construction funding appears. "At the outset, I think we would need 2 people," he said, adding that one hire could be the future director of a school construction program so that the director can shape program rules from the start.

Doniel described what he and the construction working group have discussed as likely eligibility gates: a designated facilities manager, proficiency on the DQS matrix, and a five-year capital improvement plan. He noted that those thresholds could limit how many projects are immediately eligible for aid if districts must first build capacity.

On emergency construction aid, Doniel said the program is a reimbursement system and is capped at $30,000 per emergency, which reflects a 30% cap on construction aid for an incident with a $100,000 project value. He also said $50,000 is appropriated annually for emergency construction aid and that unused funds roll over. "In the time that I've been here, I've only done 2 emergency aid applications that were paid out," he said.

Doniel also raised questions about Act 154, the Environmental Justice Act, which requires state agencies to demonstrate proportional spending for certain focus populations. He said the law's requirement to show proportionate spending on "focused populations" could affect prioritization and the distribution of construction dollars, adding that the agency and the construction working group are still parsing what those requirements will mean for school construction awards. He cautioned that the implications are not yet fully understood and recommended further work with AOE staff and the construction working group to apply the law's requirements to school construction funding.

Committee members asked about capacity and timing: Doniel said some tasksupdating the construction planning guide, setting minimum and maximum square-foot standards and building a grant systemrequire staff time but not necessarily new statutory authority. He said resources for those tasks will be driven by the expected volume of funded projects once a construction aid program is active.

Doniel described the operations-and-maintenance manual he is preparing and the idea of a pragmatic alternative for districts without a computerized maintenance management system: a spreadsheet-based preventive-maintenance routine that districts could adopt until they implement CMMS software. He also identified two training pathways already used in the field: a building-operator certification program and curriculum from the International Facility Management Association as possible bases for facility-manager certification.

No formal motion or vote was recorded on staffing, eligibility criteria or funding levels during the hearing. Doniel answered committee questions and offered to provide additional budget figures on request.

Next steps noted in the hearing: the agency will continue developing the dashboard's capital-planning phase, produce the operations-and-maintenance manual and present proposed revisions to the school construction planning guide, while the committee and construction working group continue to refine eligibility and prioritization criteria.