Ground-breaking set Oct. 8 for Early Childhood Development Center

A ground-breaking has been set for 5 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 8, at the construction site of the Van Buren Public Schools Early Childhood Development Center at 451 W. Columbia Ave. in Belleville.
School Board president Amy Pearce had asked for a ceremonial opening to construction on the site between the high school and the bus garage, purchased from the catholic church.
The project is part of the $35.49 million in a series of three bonds approved by voters in 2019 for this construction, along with work at current schools in years to come.
At Monday’s regular meeting of the school board, via Zoom, School Supt. Pete Kudlak said the school board will take part in the ceremonial ground-breaking, with hard hats and shovels, along with Granger Construction, Plante Moran, and others.
He said community dignitaries have been invited.
Supt. Kudlak said the building doesn’t have a name and board vice president Susan Featheringill asked them to be sure the initials for any name are appropriate when writing them as a shortcut.
Earlier in the meeting, the board approved an agreement with Intertek-PSI for a not-to-exceed amount of $21,907, pending final review of terms by district legal counsel, with a project contingency of $5,500.
This is for material-testing services for construction of the Early Childhood Development Center and was discussed at the last board meeting, with Rob Kakoczki of Plante Moran CRESA giving the details.
He said they reached out to six firms for proposals and received four. Intertek-PSI was recommended.
Kakoczki said PSI will be called upon by Granger Construction Company as needed for testing services throughout the construction project.
In a memo, PSI said it would provide experienced technical personnel to provide materials testing and construction observation services for new construction of a 32,000-square-foot, single-story building. The partially steel-framed building will be supported on conventional shallow footings and utilize a four-inch-thick concrete slab on grade. Additional services will be required for the sitework, including concrete sidewalks, collars, curb and gutter, dumpster enclosure pad, and hot mix asphalt pavement sections.
At Monday’s meeting, the board also approved the $1,447,437 Site Work Bid Pack #1 for the Early Childhood Development Center. This includes utility excavating, asphalt, concrete, underground electric lines and paving. Kakoczki said they plan to work through the winter so they can get the project done next summer.
Kakoczki said as an alternate they are paving all of the parking lot and drive with a base course to give crews an area to work off that is less muddy.
Subcontractors for the site work are:
• A.F. Smith, site electrical, $72,850;
• Blue Ribbon Contracting, earthwork and utilities, $761,567;
• T&M Asphalt, asphalt paving and markings, $264,800;
• Davenport Brothers, site concrete, $178,342; and
• Nationwide Construction, fencing, $56,484.
Additional bid packages for the construction of the building will be coming to the board soon, it was told.
In other business at Monday’s one-hour-and-47-minute meeting, the board:
• Learned five additional teachers, who were not recognized at the last board meeting, will be awarded tenure as of the 2019-20 school year: Demeatrice Brooks, Laurie Garden, Alexandra Richardson, Jessica Romak, and Rebecca Simon;
• Approved the resignation of Joshua Jetton, a math teacher at Belleville High School for six years, as of Sept. 4, for a job opportunity elsewhere;
• Heard Supt. Kudlak explain the 6-year, 2-mill, renewal question on the Nov. 3 ballot for the Wayne County Regional Enhancement Education Millage, using information provided by the Wayne County RESA. He estimates the millage, if approved countywide, will bring $300 per student, per year to the Van Buren district. He said, so far, the district has received an average of $1.6 million per year from the millage. He said it can only be put on the ballot in even-number years and since it expires in the fall of 2022, if it fails now it could not be put on the ballot again until after it expired;
• Approved the purchase of 1,000 Chromebooks from Stratix at a total cost of $345,000, which will be available the first week of November. Sean Garland, IT Network Administrator, said these devices will help supplement the in-person Chromebook counts at the elementary schools and set the district up for a quick response in the event there is a need to close the district to in-person learning and send all students home to learn remotely. Funding sources for this purchase are from the ESSER and CARES Act federal grants;
• Approved purchase of 100 Chromebooks from SHI at a total cost of $32,115 to provide devices to additional staff that don’t already have them to support remote learning;
• Heard Kakoczki give a dashboard report on the 2019 bond of $35,490,000, which he said he will do quarterly. He listed the projects and said the Early Childhood Development Center is expected to be finished next August;
• In response to a Zoom question about students absent from school for quarantines, Kudlak said there were six students, two groups of siblings, that have been in quarantine and are coming back. He said the close contact with a positive case did not happen at school;
• Heard Curriculum Director Jeff Moore report that the district has received $3,069,164 in various grant funds to help with providing education through the coronavirus pandemic. Financial Director Sara Cortese said some of the funding has been confusing because what it can be used for is not specific;
• Heard Director of Human Resources Abdul Madyun say he is meeting with unions to make sure everything is going well. Kudlak asked jokingly if there were no “global pandemic” clauses in the contracts and Madyun said there weren’t. He also noted new forms for Title IX harassment complaints are being developed, in accordance with the new law; and
• Heard Kudlak thank Atchinson Ford for 4,000 masks donated and delivered by Medina Atchinson. He said the district got a total of about 20,000 donated masks from various sources, including RESA.