Superintendent outlines facilities backlog and staffing challenges after recent school closures

Superintendent Robert Taylor presented a facilities update to the board focused on maintenance staffing, equipment age, service backlogs and instructional days lost to facilities problems.

Why it matters: Taylor said the district’s building footprint has grown from about 22 million to roughly 27.5 million square feet since 2015, and that only a modest increase in maintenance staff months has accompanied that growth. He said one in three schools experienced a partial instructional-day loss last year due to facilities issues.

Taylor highlighted several staffing and life-cycle issues. He gave grade-based salary examples to illustrate market pressure for skilled technicians and said that many craft and HVAC roles are difficult to fill given private-sector pay. Taylor noted the district’s reliance on contract vendors to address work orders and the need to supervise contract performance more tightly.

On asset condition and work volume, staff reported roughly 220,000 work orders a year across the district, with preventive maintenance reduced from preferred levels because much time is spent on repairs and emergency responses. Taylor said about 30 upgrade projects (completed) and roughly 35 projects underway address boilers, chillers, energy plants and HVAC systems, but that supply-chain or part-availability issues for older equipment can delay repairs.

The board questioned triage and closure decisions. Taylor explained a prioritization matrix that guides response times for requests and said the district has shifted practice in recent years: expectations from families and staff around building heat/cooling have led to more closures when systems fail. He said the district is exploring ways to avoid closures, including temporary relocations within schools when possible, and that notifications about closures typically occur near the 11:00–11:30 a.m. timeframe when bus routing impacts are considered.

Taylor told the board several funding and management levers are under review: reexamining the maintenance and operations budget for reallocation, redirecting some CIP funds (real estate acquisition or other lines) where appropriate, improving contractor oversight and pursuing strategic personnel reclassifications to be market-competitive for critical technical roles. He described “sweeps” — dedicated, focused teams that work through an assigned group of schools to clear backlogged work orders — and said the district will improve performance tracking for regional maintenance teams.

Board members and staff agreed to take a deeper dive at the Facilities Committee and in a future work session on data, triage metrics and lifecycle-versus-maintenance funding trade-offs. No formal action was taken in the work session.