Part 3 on school modernization. Commissioners not doing the job. Part 1 and Part 2 were published here earlier. Topic relates to Budget Committee Meeting, Wednesday 10/6 4 pm, Item B1, and CBOC meeting, Wednesday 10/6 12 noon, Item 9A.
How do you make the case for $284 million? If you are San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) facilities staff, you say all the prior money was spent but you show a slide where tens of millions are incorrectly tracked. The San Francisco Board of Education (SFBoE) Commissioners chose to look past those large errors. They also encouraged facilities staff in preparing a November 2022 Proposition for another billion ($1,000,000,000) in Facilities bonds.
Figure 1: Not sure how much of your tax dollars are being spent here. George Washington High School modernization and seismic strengthening project, paid for by 2016 Proposition A Facilities Bond. (source: Google maps)
Buildings and Grounds Committee Chair Faauuga Moliga
Buildings and Grounds member Commissioner Matt Alexander
Buildings and Grounds member Commissioner Mark Sanchez
Commissioner Kevine Boggess
Commissioner Alison Collins
These 5 SFBoE Commissioners were all present at the September 27, 2021 SFUSD Buildings and Grounds Committee meeting by Zoom video conference. The Facilities bond spending update was third on the agenda, the first such update since February 2020. Chief of Facilities Dawn Kamalanathan gave a slideshow presentation.
Figure 2. Committee Chair Faauuga Moliga at Augmented Buildings, Grounds, and Services Committee meeting September 27, 2021. (source: https://www.youtube.com)
Thanks to the California Brown Act, the slideshow was posted online 72 hours prior to the meeting. That same state law also allows public comment on each agendized item. Commissioners can subsequently choose to follow up on public comments by asking questions to the presenter.
Kamalanathan started off her talk with a general description of the bond program. For school modernization projects, she had this to say:
“We go through a scoping and design process. We produce a cost estimate, then we go through a more intensive planning and design process with the community. All of that results in a final project scope with again, another cost estimate and reconciliation. And then the project is put out to bid and delivered.”
Figure 3: Slide covering 2016 Facilities Bond allocations for school modernization projects
Given the heightened attention to the inability to fund site upgrades to Buena Vista Horace Mann, Kamalanathan went into detail about the many tradeoffs involved in selecting school sites, and how much to fund such projects.
She further volunteered information in response to my public comments about stated expenses at a particular school. My comments: “I just want to point out that some of the data on those slides seem incorrect. I think AP Giannini has several million dollars delta in the value that I saw from the latest modification from what she’s posted. And that is kind of worrisome for following up on all those numbers…”
Kamalanathan’s response: “There have also been places on when the public comment was made about the APG (AP Giannini) in any budget and how it seems off. There were other funding sources added to that project as well, though. We’re only listing, I believe in this slide, bond dollars expended at a site. And that does not include necessarily, PUC stormwater money and things like that.”
In short, the amount on the slide is less than the work being put into the school site. Here’s the problem. The latest construction budget modification for AP Giannini approved by the SFBoE was September 28, 2021 for a little over $28 million. Her slide had the site spent from bond money to be $39 million. Architecture costs were under $3 million. Thus, my concern was the slide data were $8 million too high for the sum of the project costs. Adding in other non-bond funds would only make that number a bigger delta.
Just a few million delta over 2 years
Where are there data to compare such numbers on the modernization slide? The Citizens Bond Oversight Committee (CBOC) has asked for and has not received budgets per site. There were no data slides from the February 2020 Buildings and Grounds Committee update. The most recent data were presented April 22, 2019.
Figure 4: Slide from 2019 covering estimated project costs for school modernization projects. Some other school estimates were on a prior slide.
Multiple school sites had significant deltas in dollar value between 2019 and 2021. Some of the dollar differences may be explained away with a change in scope or other reason. Or not. There are so many unanswered questions. For brevity’s sake, let’s consider 7 sites: Tule Elk Park EES, Lafayette ES, Hillcrest ES, Claire Lilienthal 3-8, AP Giannini MS, George Washington HS, Thurgood Marshall HS.
Tule Elk Park EES 2019: $23,229,534
Tule Elk Park EES 2021: $25,052,000
Delta +$1,822,466 or +7.8%
Lafayette ES 2019: $26,318,700
Lafayette ES 2021: $1,868,387
Delta -$24,450,313 or -93%
Hillcrest ES 2019: $26,509,146
Hillcrest ES 2021: $31,756,000
Delta +$5,246,854 or +20%
Claire Lilienthal 3-8 2019: $18,391,438
Claire Lilienthal 3-8 2021: $20,960,000
Delta +$2,568,562 or +$14%
AP Giannini MS 2019: $31,714,937
AP Giannini MS 2021: $39,250,000
Delta +$7,535,063 or +24%
George Washington HS 2019: $50,621,281
George Washington HS 2021: $17,387,661
Delta -$33,233,630 or -66%
Thurgood Marshall HS 2019: $32,998,836
Thurgood Marshall HS 2021: $43,041,000
Delta +$10,042,164 or +30%
Those 2019 numbers appear close to a Q4 2018 report of modernization spending, so those number appear consistent. The question of job creep is still outstanding and unanswered. The big changes in the negative for Lafayette ES and George Washington HS are new puzzles.
Tens of millions delta in less than 1 year
Another source of data, more contemporaneous, are the construction contract modifications approved as Consent items by the SFBoE at each regular Board Meeting. Such modifications reflect updates to the agreed upon scope of work and expenses approved, due to new discoveries on the site, additions to scope from the district, or other reasons. Again, the seven schools…
Tule Elk Park EES 2021: $25,052,000
construction contract 2606 mod 10 9/28/21 $12 million and 5101 mod 2 3/23/21 $3 million
Delta ~+$10 million
Lafayette ES 2021: $1,868,387
construction contract 2546 mod 12 3/23/21 $20 million
Delta ~-$18 million
Hillcrest ES 2021: $31,756,000
construction contract 5137 mod 15 9/14/21 $13 million
Delta ~+$18 million
Claire Lilienthal 3-8 2021: $20,960,000
construction contract 5183 mod 7 9/28/21 $11 million
Delta ~+$10 million
AP Giannini MS 2021: $39,250,000
construction contract 5107, mod 6 9/28/21 $28 million
Delta ~+$11 million
George Washington HS 2021: $17,387,661
construction contract 2548 mod 21 8/24/21 $40 million
Delta ~-$23 million
Thurgood Marshall HS 2021: $43,041,000
construction contract 5217 mod 5 9/28/21 $ 29 million
Delta ~+$14 million
Why such considerable discrepencies for these schools? Architecture fees, engineering fees, other consultants, and temporary housing cannot account for much more than 15% of construction costs in most projects.
Need. More. Money.
There are just a few opportunities to get answers to what is going on with these school modernization numbers. The District will bring up the $284 million bond request at this Wednesday’s Augmented Budget Meeting. It will then be discussed once more in an early November General meeting. The next Buildings and Grounds Committee meeting is in late October. The CBOC meetings are every two weeks.
And planning for the next Facilities Bond Proposition is underway. This time project estimates will be done by a Texas company which has no experience with San Francisco seismic needs.
If you can't track the money, then most likely there is funny business going on or embezzlement. I'm not saying it is happening here. When you can't track the money and lot of things are left out, it never ends well. Just like the Bernard Madoff situation where the numbers don't add up and lot of things left out during audits. I am just saying it looks very suspicious. At the minimum, some people in charge over there needs to be fired for incompetence.
The WCCUSD district across the bay from you knows how big dollars disappear and no one knows how it happened!!!! No one is held accountable.