Bond Advisory Committee - Questionnaire 04-07-25.xlsx

	A	B	C
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2		Questions	Responses
3	1	Instead of adding AC, can we add fans?	Yes this is a possibility.
4	2	What is the strategic plan for the district? How will this plan affect the bond?	The Board and Admnistration is working to develop an updated strategic plan.
5	3	Should the middle school pools remain open?	For the pools to remain there are renovations that must be made including structural work at Parcells, and HVAC / Electrical work at all 3 pools
6	4	Should we consider right-sizing and repurposing the middle school pools? Does the district need five?	The pool renovations should be considered by the Bond Advisory Committee and part of the Committees recommendation to the Board on the preferences of the community.
7	5	Can we get the price to convert pools to workout rooms or robotics spaces?	The price to convert all pools into STEAM classrooms (or similar space) is roughly $19M. We will need to review this budget and provide more info.
8	6	It would help to share the Forest Hills presentation on school funding.	Not sure what this is referencing.
9	7	Will we get the Trombly survey data?	Yes. When the District receives the data from Epic MRA we will pass it along to the community.
10	8	Is the mother's club on board with moving the offices (at South) again?	At this time we do not know.
11	9	Can you quantify the impact of renovations with AC, boilers, pools, lighting, etc.	Budgetary impact for the various renovation projects will differ. While renovations such as lighting and boilers would reduce operational costs, adding air conditioning or bringing pools back online would increase operational costs.
12	10	What are the operating costs (outside of salaries) to maintain Trombly?	There are a lot of variables, including utilization, but the approximate cost to operate Trombly $1M annual costs.
13	11	What is the scope of the athletic complex you've seen built.	Scope for athletic complexes vary based on the needs of each District/Community. Scope could include indoor turf, restrooms, locker rooms, workout facilities, walking/running tracks, batting cages, golf simulators, etc.
14	12	What is the nature of the furniture replacement recommended and is it really important for learning	The 2018 Bond included zero furniture replacement and much of the furniture throughout the district is worn and old. GP should speak to the impact on instruction. Furniture replacement includes classroom, commons area, media center, and main office furniture for each building.
15	13	Is it outside of our scope of work to recommend any changes to elementary boundaries to help equalize building utilization	Yes at this time.
16	14	What other funding options (grant) might be possible for needs that have a large up-front cost but lower maintenance costs?	There are many different grants available but none that would provide the funding required for all of the items being discussed.
17	15	Do we expect to lose the additional funding from the State above the $9k?	GP should talk about the State budget process and School Aid Fund
18	16	Will the projects/proposals we suggest be altered or scrapped if federal funding is lost?	No, a Bond Porposal would be paid for by local tax millages and separate from any Federal Funding issues.
19	17	Looking at the utilization do we need all of our spaces? Could there be opportunities to maximize our resources by re-organizing?	The District previously closed 2 elementary schools to help save operational / maintenance costs and increase utilization.
20	18	Are there savings on interest that happen when expenditures are spaced?	The District (with help from PFM and Plante Moran Realpoint) will work to carefully structure the Bond Sale and cash flow to minimize interest payment and optimize earned interest.
21	19	Capture rate of live births - Why and how is this data in dispute? How else can it be interpreted and what other ways can this be viewed?	This data comes from nationaly recognized sources like the U.S. Census Bureau
22	20	When and how is utilization factored into this conversation? This should be clarified before prioritizing.	Many Districts across the State have lower than optimal utilization numbers due to declining birth rates and K-12 enrollment numbers across the State. Please refer to slide from Meeting #1.
23	21	Do we know community usage of items/places like the pools, field houses, auditoriums, etc.?	The District can provide some high level detail on usage of these areas. Ben to finalize.
24	22	Our table specifically wanted Coopers Square to be filled in and level so ADA compliant.	Thank you for sharing.
25	23	Do the projects in the 2025 Bond Scope by school/facility address deferred maintenance needs or are those projects meant to address tackle future needs of those buildings? Or said otherwise, how munch of the $60M is for deferred maintenance?	The information and options being presented to the Bond Advisory Committee include the deferred maintenance needs for the district. All of the critical needs items have been included in the $60M of scope The District is reommending including in the November Bond Proposal.
26	24	Would changing the boilers reduce operating expense for those schools? If so, how much?	PMR is obtaining historical data to answer this question.
27	25	Wouldn't it make sense to have a meeting after June 9th Board first read to respond to any questions?	TBD on BAC meeting schedules and meeting bond proposal deadlines.
28	26	Why are we investing in Trombly? Are we going to utilize the space?	At this point the District is considering possible uses for this space to fit the needs of the District.
29	27	What is the time frame for spending the bond money/completing the projects?	The bond is a three (3) series bond. Bonds will be issued in November of 2025, 2027, and 2030. Implementation is expected to run through 2031.
30	28	Can we look at reducing our district foot print in order to maximize our dollars and get us up for long term financial success?	See answer to question 17.
31	29	1) Plante Moran has building capacities listed in 2017 and they changed in 2022 (some capacities went way up, some went way down, some largely the same). For instance, Defer is stated to currently have a capacity of 600 students with 459 students enrolled. That is a utilization of 76.5%. But the capacity of Defer in 2021 was stated as 525 students. What modifications to the school, teaching experience, or learning experience changed to add a capacity of 75 students? In 2021, if 459 students were at Defer, that would be listed as a utilization of 87.4%. This question applies to all schools (Kerby has an inverse story, its capacity decreased in 2022 and has gone from a lower utilization to a higher utilization because of it). And as stated in our first Bond meeting, Plante Moran indicated you ideally do NOT want your utilization higher than 80%? 2) In what ways do we use Plante Moran’s enrollment projections in various forms of budgeting? If you look at the Fall FTE of 6,392 for the district in 2024-2025, that is larger than predicted by Plante Moran’s projections. Their numbers are instructive, but it seems there is a consistent undercounting bias somewhere in the model. If you look at this school year (which we still don’t have a final FTE for) and the Plante Moran projections from 2022, 2023, 2024, you’ll see that this school year was: ⁃ In its 2022 projection, PM projected that we’d have 6,193 kids in 2024-2025 (under projected by 199 kids/3.2%) ⁃ In its 2023 projection, PM projected that we’d have 6,194 kids in 2024-2025 (under projected by 198 kids/3.2%) ⁃ In its 2024 projection, PM projected that we’d have 6,282 kids in 2024-2025 (under projected by 110 kids/1.8%) This trend is consistent across school years and enrollment reports since 2021. Can Plante Moran or the district provide some color on why this is?	Building Utilization can vary significantly dependeing on a variety of factors. These include but are not limIted to: The mix of Programs offered in each building, support spaces required by the district, target class sizes, administrative spaces, etc. For example in the lst 10-15 years many elementary schools across the state went from zero computer labs, to 1 computer lab, to 2 labs when testing requirements changed to zero when districts switched to chrome book carts or went 1 to 1. This change from 0 to 1, to 2 back to 0 changes the utilization percentage as rooms are avaialble or unavailable for general ed. classrooms. The same thing happens when special ed programs move from building to building or grow or shrink or when buildings need more space set aside for resource rooms and other support spaces. Defer's capacity changed largely because two computer labs were converted to general ed. classroom spaces as was one other space in the building. Enrollment projections are just that, projections. They are based upon previous enrollment numbers and other factors. PMR is typically 99% accurrate (within 1% error of margin) but over the last 5 years enrollment numbers at many districts have swung wildly due to things like the global pandemic, virtual academies, home schooling, charter schools, private schools, falling birth rates, etc. All of these have made it more difficult to accurately project enrollments.
32	30	Are we only relying on the Plante Moran Data reports when looking to make decisions on this bond, and future board driven decisions? Yes, we do need to use data to assist in making decisions. But I feel our district is a bit unique to compare to Wayne county as a whole. All of the GP communities, have the highest concentration of over 65 YO's in its history as of today. Are we working with the local municipalities, Real Estate companies, and others to get a full understanding of the potential population shift that is on the horizon. I ask, because as a representative of GPP, we are already seeing the shift. Are we going to embrace the potential change, or just rely on a county wide report?	Please refer to the Demographics report attached (shared with District). The District continues to age and there are fewer 0-18 year olds. This does not look to change in the near future.
33	31	After the previous bond was approved and ultimately voted in by residents of GP. The board then proceeded to close (2) schools shortly after. How can we reassure the public that all allocated funds within this new bond, will be used for those specific buildings, and identified needs? In addition, if there are discussions or thoughts about any future school closings; I feel it would be right to be fully transparent with residents now. Perhaps a statement from the board, may set some resident minds at ease. As a "repeat" of the above could be devastating to any future funding requests for the district.	At this juncture the Board has not expressed any desire to close any currently operating schools.
34	32	Is it possible to price out an estimate of what it would cost to expand early childhood education programs in each of the elementary schools? Per every assessment we have received there is excess capacity in each elementary school. Every signal that is being given by the government is an expansion of early childhood to be fully funded by the government so that 4 yr. olds will be included like young 5's and kindergarten. We should look at how to prepare for that. Our neighborhood schools are the core competency of our public education system. I think that a further investment in our current model would be highly effective to get students into our system as early as possible to edge out other competitors.	Some Districts centralize Pre-K and some don't centralize it. Yes we could look at renovating 2 classrooms for Pre-K at every elementary school. We would need to do some pre-dedesign work but ROM costs we would expect a good budget to be roughly $500K - $1M at each building
35	33	1. On page 26 (Updated Facility Assessment) - how does the 2024 Sinking Fund Plan cover $110 million in needs? 2. Can you provide a list of current school millage in the GPPSS and how it compares to school millages in "peer" districts such as Birmingham, Troy, Novi, Macomb County, Ann Arbor? I'm interested in comparing school taxes only. 3. Will we / the Board / the community be presented other potential projects for the bond funds? I'd love to have more ideas like that from administrators that could really enhance our district and offer something new for the future and to get the community excited about.	1. We have this slide from the SInking Fund PPT deck. 2. We have this slide for similar schools (I believe we cut it out of presentation #1) and for Wayne County Schools GP is in the lower half on both and has been very good stewards of the community's tax dollars. 3. If anyone has good ideas now is the time to talk about them. Between all the administrators on the committee I think we have a good sense of what is needed/wanted
36	34	How many weeks a year on average is it unbearable in our buildings due to extreme heat? Also, if we spent $12 million on air conditioning, about how many students would that impact?	Different individuals would have different opinions on this matter. All GPPSS students would be impacted by air conditioning.
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