Precious little went right during the first half of the rebuilding of Jones High School. Costs soared, records were missing, plans kept changing, oversight was lacking and fingers pointed in blame.
Jones High became a case study of how not to rebuild a school.
A member of the district’s oversight committee vows that things are different now in the Orange County school district’s facilities department. They had better be. The district can’t afford any more lapses as woeful as this. As it launches its $2 billion, 13-year school-construction program this year, it has only the leanest of contingency budgets.
Ironically, the Jones High project wasn’t even on the list of schools to be built with the new half-cent sales tax approved in November. Jones was supposed to be well on its way toward completion by now, built with other sources of construction money.
Back in 2000, the district thought it could afford to replace Jones by building it in stages and spreading out the $35 million cost. But by the end of last year, the job was budgeted at $49 million and was a year behind schedule.
The problems with the Jones project are almost too numerous to list. According to audits and district records, they include an inexperienced architect who didn’t deliver his plans on time, a project manager who didn’t keep key records on file and a general contractor who hired subcontractors without seeking bids from them. While all this was going on, a revolving door of district staffers visited the site, with no one taking responsibility when things went wrong.
To make matters worse, when members of the Construction Oversight Value Engineering committee, or COVE, asked questions, a senior staff member assured them that everything on the project was fine. By the time auditors identified the problems, significant time and money had been wasted.
Jones High students pay a daily price for this mismanagement. They’ve had to endure ongoing construction chaos, including portable classrooms, no covered walkways, limited athletic facilities and even poor workmanship at newly completed buildings.
If there is good news in all of this, it is that the district last year overhauled the facilities department. The staffers involved with the Jones project are gone. A much-needed system of checks and balances has been installed. According to COVE member Bill Kivler, staffers and contractors now are being held accountable. When something doesn’t go right now, COVE can go directly to the person in charge of that aspect. And if COVE still isn’t satisfied, it can seek an independent audit without asking the district’s permission.
Checks and balances. Accountability. The Orange County school district owes it to its students and to taxpayers to expect those standards during the rest of the Jones project and from all future construction projects.
