The Richmond School District plans to simplify its consultation process on seismic upgrades in order to speed up the process and possibly save money.
The board of education will consider a policy change at its Wednesday board meeting, the first meeting of the school year. A report to the board from Frank Geyer, director of planning and development, states that a simplified process would be “more responsive to the time sensitive needs of the projects.”
The school district is hoping to upgrade 25 schools by the year 2030, and the report states that an extensive planning and consultation process might have an impact on project timelines and costs.
Under the current policy, all major and minor projects, including seismic upgrades, will be overseen by a steering committee. The new policy replaces this steering committee with a project design advisory committee, which is somewhat smaller and only meets three or four times during the project.
The committee would include senior school board staff as well as PAC and union representatives. They would report back to their respective organizations on the seismic project.
The current policy includes a public workshop and approval from the board of education of the design before it’s submitted to the ministry of education for approval.
