Dr. H. Ferhan Kilical, Dr. Adil A. Kilical
The District of Columbia Public School System (DCPS) currently operates 164 schools in addition to administrative buildings. Task Force on Education Infrastructure for the 21st Century (Task Force) was asked to develop a long term strategy to modernize the public school facilities in the District of Columbia.
In order to verify and update the 1992 facilities assessment, PRI conducted a visual inspection of school buildings and their nonoperating systems. Along with the school inspections, a unit price list for all observed deficiencies was prepared. The deficiencies were classified into major building components as established by the DCPS. PRI prepared a deficiency cost database for the 164 schools using the observed deficiency quantities and adjusted 1995 unit prices.
Further, status information on the 164 operating DCPS schools, such as name of the school, additional educational programs, average class size, student enrollment, school capacity, community accessibility, comfort and usefulness ratings of various spaces, handicap accessibility, room closings due to health or safety considerations, and rating of facility components such as the roof, windows, boilers, drinking fountains, etc., was collected.
GIS themes included ward boundaries, school locations, attendance zones, streets, etc. Then, deficiency cost data as well as the status data was reviewed and restructured by PRI to enable tabular entry. A total of more than 120 GIS fields for each of 164 schools was prepared to enable logical queries, charts, graphs, etc. Using this GIS application as a decision making tool, DCPS can realistically estimate what major components in schools must be repaired / replaced and within what time frame, and determine what level of maintenance, repair and capital replacement funding will be necessary for each of the two 5-year funding cycles anticipated in its capital budget through the year 2005.
The District of Columbia Public School System (DCPS) currently operates 164 schools in addition to administrative buildings. The inventory of operating school buildings comprises 16,276,600 square feet (sq. ft.) of interior space, and 31 million sq. ft. of exterior space comprised of athletic fields, parking areas, sidewalks, and playgrounds. The age of the operating schools and administrative buildings in the school inventory is a major problem as 37 percent of them are over 65 years old.
It is the intent of the DCPS to have a Facilities Master Plan that will
provide the framework to:
Task A. Compile, Review and Update Existing Deficiency Database
The District has never had sufficient funds to implement a system-wide program to modernize its facilities. During the 1960s and 1970s, when the District had considerable capital funding for schools, the District had to build new schools and additions to accommodate the drastic enrollment increases of that time. During that period, the older schools, except where additions were constructed, benefited from few capital improvements. Since 1985, only two schools have had total renovations. Prior to 1985 only six schools had total renovations. In FY 1991, the DCPS was able to begin an ambitious program of component replacements. However, after two years of adequate financing, this effort slowed immensely due to fiscal problems in the District. The deficiency cost data prepared during that period became outdated.
In order to verify and update the 1992 facilities assessment, a visual
inspection of school buildings and their nonoperating systems was conducted.
Due to time constraints and budget limitations, a sample size of 10 percent
was selected. The selection of 17 schools of 164 operating schools was based
on the following criteria:
Along with the school inspections, a unit price list for all observed
deficiencies was prepared using Means Facilities Maintenance & Repair Cost
Data for 1995, which had MS Excel 5.0 interface. The unit prices were
adjusted by applying the Means city index for Washington, D.C. The
deficiencies were classified into major building components as established by
the DCPS:
Using MS Excel, the 1992 and 1995 deficiency costs for 17 schools were subtotaled under established major building components. The 1992 and 1995 deficiency cost totals of each building component for the 17 schools were computed. Then, the adjustment coefficient for each building component was determined using the change in the deficiency cost. This adjustment coefficient was applied to the 1992 deficiency cost data for the remaining schools to provide a reliable estimate of costs to abate deficiencies and bring the schools to a state of good repair. It should be noted that the Means historical cost index could not be used to update the existing 1992 deficiency cost data as the conditions of buildings have changed since then. The cost database was used to generate different reports for the cost of repairs and maintenance to these schools since the deficiencies were reported in 1991-92. Thereupon, the deficiency cost per sq. ft. ranged from $5.87 to $109.26, with the average of 164 operating schools being $35.95/sq. ft.
Consequently, Task A insured that:
During the execution of Task A, Task Force collected status information from the 164 operating DCPS schools, as well as basic information. The questionnaire sent to schools consisted of three parts:
The following themes were created as GIS themes: ward boundaries, school locations, attendance zones, rivers, and streets. School locations were entered as a point coverage, ward boundaries, attendance zones and rivers as polygons, and streets as an arc coverage.
Using this GIS application as a decision making tool, DCPS can realistically estimate what major components in schools must be repaired / replaced and within what time frame, and determine what level of maintenance, repair and capital replacement funding will be necessary for each of the two 5-year funding cycles anticipated in its capital budget through the year 2005.
Because ArcView is a highly user friendly software, this application became a very handy tool. DCPS staff, after a two-day training, was able to perform routine tasks. This application served one of its purposes as DCPS secured funding based on the reports prepared by the DCPS staff using the deficiency and spatial relational database, and performing logical queries.
Further, DCPS can make analytical queries to assist them in their other
decisions, such as: