January 26, 2024
Dear IAA Community,
I hope this message finds you excited about the new year (if not the rain!). Part of our commitment in this project is to communicate with you as a community regularly so you are informed about major updates and this update is one key way to achieve that goal. We also want this to be a collaborative process where you know that the IAA community’s needs have been understood. As part of that, we are planning to start a monthly IAA Renovation Parent Group to provide a venue for open dialog with you around this project. We know things are moving quickly and hope this new outlet will provide space and allow for more collaboration and communication. Below please find a few updates on the IAA renovation project. As always, please feel free to reach out with questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Tom
IAA Renovation Parent Group – Principal Mattie Scheidt and our Coordinator of the Office of Engagement Victor Prussack are looking for a few parents to meet monthly regarding the project. The meeting will happen on the last Tuesday of each month from 8:15-9:15 am. If you are interested in participating, please email Victor directly at vprussac@bsdvt.org. The first meeting is scheduled for this Tuesday, January 30th at IAA.
Transportation and Afterschool – We are in the process of finalizing a contract with Affordable Transportation to provide busing to and from Sara Holbrook and St. Marks. In the morning, buses will pick up at the Boys and Girls Club and take students to their destination.
- In the afternoon, buses will take kindergarten students in the afterschool program to St. Marks, where Boys and Girls Club will run programs for K-3.
- 4th and 5th graders will be transported back to the Boys and Girls Club for afterschool, along with any students who do not participate in afterschool but who need to get back to the neighborhood.
- We’ll also provide a late bus from St. Marks to the Boys and Girls Club to return K-3 students to the neighborhood (exact time TBD).
In addition, our awesome partners at Boys and Girls Club have agreed to allow us to use the Club and Roosevelt Park Playground (“Little Rosie”) as the base for where IAA students will gather to wait for the bus. For inclement weather, we will be able to access the classroom that is in the center of Roosevelt Park.
Kindergarten Planning at Sara Holbrook – Kindergarten and Unified Arts teachers from IAA visited Sara Holbrook and are excited to work with Kindergarten and PreK students in that space. (Kindergarten registration is open!) The PreK and K teams are really excited to be working together in the building which was built less than five years ago and has a dedicated gym, great age-appropriate playground, off-street drop-off and pick-up, and enough parking for our staff. We are also actively developing a plan for administrative support for the programming and classes at Sara Holbrook. Stacie Curtis, our Early Education Director, will have her office located at Sara Holbrook as one form of support, although she will not be the principal there, and we know we will need to hire an additional person who can support the operations onsite. There will also be a receptionist at the front door to welcome visitors.
Testing for Hazardous Materials – As part of the State’s PCB School Testing Program, IAA was initially scheduled to be tested further down the road. We requested to be moved up the queue because of our planned renovation project. We expect to receive the official results soon. In addition, we have completed our asbestos survey; those results can be found here and will be added to our asbestos management plan. Finally, I want to clarify that we will not be doing additional testing for lead, as we previously participated in that program through the State. (Lead water results are available for all schools on the ANR website.)
St. Marks Campus Updates (Safety, IT, Dining) – Teachers, including special educators, have started to tour St. Marks to ensure that the new space will meet the needs of all of our students. We also completed a walkthrough with the BSD safety team to review safety protocols and identify any areas/spaces that will need safety updates, and held our first meeting with IT to identify technology needs in the new space. We are confident that wired and wireless technology will be in place and we will be able to run our needed technology. Members of our design team also met to sketch out the area at St. Marks where we will create a fenced-in space for drop off and pick up as well as for recesses and PE. We will have refurbished playground equipment and a nice open space for recess and PE. During inclement weather, PE will take place in the Cafeteria/Multipurpose room. As a reminder, Saint Marks has separate kitchen and dining spaces for our students. These spaces have been used recently and will require very little investment/attention to serve our students well.
Dental Clinic – We have agreed to continue to host the District’s Dental Clinic for the Community Health Centers of Burlington at IAA. Similar mechanical system ventilation upgrades will be made in the Dental Clinic as the rest of the building and additional work will include the replacement of the windows.
Bids and Scope of Work – We are excited to announce that we expect the bids for work to come back next week. Following that, our design team will dig into the bids to provide a recommendation to me on the best path forward regarding the scope of the work and what we can afford to accomplish and whether that work should be completed all at once or phased in over time. (We would only displace students once, but we may need to create a plan to tackle some of the other smaller portions of the work over time.
Timeline –
Renovation Design of Alternative Learning Spaces at St. Marks – March/April 2024
Non-displacing Work at IAA Begins – April 2024
Renovations of Alternative Learning Spaces – June 2024
Phase One and Two Completion – Spring 2025 (had anticipated December 31, 2024 for Phase 1 and March 2025 for Phase 2)–
