GISD approves design plan for bond maintenance projects

The Gonzales ISD school board held its regularly scheduled meeting Monday, Nov. 11 at the GISD Administration Building.

One of the big agenda items that was discussed at last Monday’s meeting was the approval of the designs for the maintenance projects as part of the 2023 Bond program.

Casey Sledge of Sledge Engineering discussed the importance of approving a plan.

“It's an important milestone to be okayed. It gives a direction before, not to the finalization of plans. It's bidding in the spring and things like that. Later, we'll come back to the board, and you will consider actual bid pricing and award at that time,” Sledge said.

The primary focus on the maintenance projects is to improve: safety and security, accessibility, infrastructure repairs and improvements, HVAC replacements and improvements, building envelope, roofing and paving.

“What makes this set of projects a little bit unique compared to what you saw with the CTE and Ag project is this affects every other campus you have, all your existing campuses, and coming up with the scope of work has been a significant amount of effort for VLK and their team and their sub consultants,” Sledge said.

Michael Martinez of VLK spoke to the board about the schematics and went over the primary focuses of each campuses.

“We received your priorities list that you had with your initial bond, and then we went to each campus to verify each of those items. We took your existing drawings, we digitized them, turned them into working drawings for things that we could draw on top of, and we sat down and we met with someone from each campus, the leadership from each campus, and also with district leadership to review the priorities list,” Martinez said.

Martinez added that the project is under budget on all the campuses and he added the district will have $2.6 million remaining from the $16.6 million that was budgeted to spend on each of the campuses.

The board approved the schematic design for the Bond Maintenance Project.

In other business, the board approved the following agenda items:

– approved the TASB Board Policy Update 123, affecting GISD Local Policies.

– approved the possible Resolution/Settlement Agreement in Administrative Hearing Cause No. 24-0146-K; Gonzales Independent School District vs. Texas Department of Health & Human Services.