Facilities director outlines maintenance priorities, HVAC capacity and new grounds team

Trevor Swenson, the district’s executive director of facilities, gave the governing board an overview of the district’s facilities operations, staffing and recent projects, stressing preventive maintenance and safety.

Swenson told the board the facilities department supports seven campuses, the district office complex and a warehouse, serving roughly 11,000 students and about 1,100 staff. He said the district maintains 99 buildings across about 375 acres; the oldest building dates to 1914 and the newest was completed in 2024, with an average building age of about 29 years.

Staffing and operations numbers cited in the presentation included 112 facilities-team members: 51 custodians, 21 groundskeepers, 17 maintenance technicians, 12 campus supervisors and five HVAC technicians. Swenson said the department had processed approximately 1,100 work orders since July 1 and that most repairs are completed by district staff; he estimated outside vendors are used in fewer than 5 percent of cases, reserved for specialized or emergency work.

Swenson outlined the district’s HVAC and food-service refrigeration capacity: 11 water-cooled chillers and five cooling towers providing roughly 5,300 tons of cooling capacity, along with hundreds of package units, fan-coil units, evaporative coolers and mini-split units. The district runs four dedicated computer-room air conditioners to cool a critical server room and reported eight walk-in freezers and six walk-in refrigerators supporting the student nutrition program. He said the district uses more than 15,000 air filters per year.

Swenson also described a new specialized grounds team that will focus on the district’s baseball and softball infields and noted recent equipment purchases for that unit, including an infield groomer. He described an inventory of athletic and campus assets — 564 classrooms, 12 gymnasiums, seven cafeterias, five auditoriums and 31 athletic fields — and said a sixth running track was scheduled to be completed this month. He closed by thanking facilities staff for work during recent severe weather.

During board questions, a member asked whether the district uses outside vendors for equipment such as air-conditioning repairs; Swenson said district technicians handle most work and the outside vendors are for specialized cases, reiterating the "fewer than 5%" estimate. Board members also asked about generators; Swenson said the district has two mobile 65 kW generators mounted on trailers and that the freezers have hookup connections so the generators can be deployed in a power loss event.

At the meeting’s public-comment period, parent Joanna Smith asked the board to address erosion and damaged paving at the COFA campus and requested a new scoreboard for a football field. District staff asked the commenter to fill out a public-comment form so the district can follow up and record contact information for a response.

Swenson closed by inviting questions and said the department continues to prioritize preventive maintenance, safety and fiscal stewardship.