Facilities details: Coakley and HS issues

Norwood Facilities Director Christopher Folan came to the most recent meeting of the Norwood School Committee to give an update on the status of the various school buildings.

Folan said aside from the usual maintenance calls, they are currently working on preparation for the reshuffling of the Willett Early Education Center, which is reorganizing from a district-wide kindergarten to a K-4 school.

“Last summer was the Coakley Shuffle, and this year is going to be the Willett Shuffle,” he said. “So it’s been two different summers for sure for the staff. Last year was a very very hot summer, and it looks like it’s going to be 80 degrees next week already. So I think this year is going to be very very hot again. But we’ll get through the Willett move, and they’ll be ready for September for sure.”

The Willett move and Coakley move are related. All stem from a decision about four years ago to shift the fifth grade to the Coakley Middle School from the elementary schools, and this caused the Town to perform a redistricting study that found using the Willett as a K-4 elementary school – as it had been before becoming a Kindergarten – would help alleviate overcrowding in the elementary schools.

The Willett isn’t the only school facing a reorganization, as all the elementary schools will be forming their own kindergarten classes, but the Willett was the only one designed for one specific age group at very specific average heights, so more furniture will need to be moved around there than at the other schools.

For the new Coakley itself, Folan said there have been some “teething” issues, as there are with any new building, and they are working them out.

“I hate to say it now, but we are a little more concerned with the Coakley than we are with the high school,” he said. “It’s a sad state of affairs, but we’re limping through there. And that’s the speed they’re working at and believe me, we’re pushing.”

Most recently and specifically, Folan said a sink hole has developed in the turf field of the Coakley, and the contractor who built the building is fixing it, but it’s getting complicated.

“They’re going to be doing more extensive work. Unfortunately some things didn’t go the right way yesterday and you can’t do anything today,” he said. “That’s going to delay the field opening a couple of weeks. There is a groundwater issue in the south corner of the field on the Washington Street side with a sink hole, and it has gotten bigger. They had to open it up and look at it, but we’re determined even if it takes another week or two, it’s got to be done right. So we’re on it and pushing.”

Folan said his department has worked historically over the last six years of its existence – the facilities for the schools and general government used to be split up – at about 85 percent for the schools and 15 percent for the other government buildings. Folan said the majority of the work orders in the schools go to the Norwood High School, but stipulated that most of those are either small fixes or preventative maintenance.

“Some of these are lights not working in a room or something’s broken in the bathroom,” he said. “Like one of the faucets might not shut off all the way or a toilet could be broken. Could be cracked; we’ve seen that before. For the most part they’re minor things, but they have to be attended to. For instance one of the flushometers won’t stop on one of the urinals, so you’ve got to get up there because you don’t want to waste 1,000 gallons of water. And we’ve had some heating issues too, but nothing dramatic. You have people who walk through the high school who just walked through the Coakley and say, ‘These buildings can’t be 15 years apart,’ because the building still looks amazing.”

Folan added that the high school is a big building with a lot of components and a lot of things that can go wrong.

“And they do,” he said. “And we just take care of them. Nothing is – knock on wood – anything that’s a budget breaker, just the little things that add up. Nothing to be concerned with.”

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In other news, Director of Student Services for Special Education, Counseling and Nursing Kate Davey went through the Student Services Audit Action Plan. The audit was originally sanctioned and funded by Town Meeting because Norwood had a higher recommendation rate for Individual Education Plans (IEPs) than the state average, and so the Town was spending much more on special education than the state average.

This update from Davey and Deputy Superintendent of Finance and Operations Sean Mannion was the third such update on the implementation of recommendations from the study.

Davey said they have been able to at least lighten case loads for their department by becoming more flexible and being able to move staff around to where there are unexpected increases in case loads. She said for instance the counselors at the Norwood High School are seeing a particularly high year with 17 caseloads per staff, and so they were able to move some paraprofessionals from the elementary schools to help lighten the load and make everybody work a bit better.

Davey said they have implemented weekly office hours for special education staff to come if they have any issues and are working towards “horizontal and vertical” alignment within the district with all special education team chairs to make sure services make sense in between grades and future staff changes.

The full audit can be found at https://gvimes.link/servicesaudit