{"id":41406,"date":"2018-11-14T10:01:31","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T15:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=41406"},"modified":"2018-11-14T10:01:33","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T15:01:33","slug":"ucf-facilities-plan-starts-to-take-shape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=41406","title":{"rendered":"UCF facilities plan starts to take shape"},"content":{"rendered":"

By JP Phillips<\/strong>, Staff Writer, The Times<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A postcard sent to residents about the proposed facilities plan.<\/p><\/div>\n

This past spring, the Unionville-Chadds Ford School Board hired a consultant to recommend the best use of roads, parking areas, and athletic facilities located on the high school, middle school and Unionville Elementary campuses (the Grounds Plan).\u00a0\u00a0 Since then, the proposal has been discussed and dissected. Many community members contributed their thoughts.<\/p>\n

The board always considered the presentation as a work-in-progress.\u00a0 After studying and listening to input, they planned to approve all, some, or none of the projects.<\/p>\n

Last night\u2019s work session indicated that the board agrees generally on adding two additional artificial turf fields.\u00a0 But instead of placing them by Doe Run Road as per the original proposal, there is interest in installing them by the middle school (in place of 3 grass fields).<\/p>\n

Supervisor of Buildings and Grounds James Whitesel suggested possibly moving the tennis courts to the rear parking lot of the high school.\u00a0 Keeping all artificial turf fields and tennis courts by the schools would enable current building facilities to be used.\u00a0 The District could then investigate adding more parking in the front of the schools.<\/p>\n

Whitesel is also requesting a traffic study of Route 82 in front of the middle and high schools during school start and end times.\u00a0 This information will be used to better determine the need for revisions to the traffic pattern and parking.\u00a0 The $8,950 study will be voted on at next week\u2019s board meeting.<\/p>\n

Over the past few months, many residents expressed concerns that field renovations and expansions may not be necessary if it weren\u2019t for outside community sports groups that utilize the grounds.\u00a0 Answers for requests to know how much the district receives for field \u201crent\u201d have been somewhat nebulous.\u00a0 It appears they are not always charged.<\/p>\n

Board member Vic Dupuis addressed this in his closing comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Hostetler (retired Supervisor of Buildings and Grounds) did a study about four years ago that concluded that based on the equipment, and maintenance needs, and fertilizer, and everything else associated with field that was above and beyond what we would have spent anyways for our own kids in school it worked out to about $6.50 an hour of additional incremental expense.\u201d\u00a0 Dupuis recognized that the data was old and costs might be higher today.\u00a0 He continued, \u201cWhen you think about charging those non-profit outside groups as is our policy at that cost–$6.50 an hour–and you look at the value of scoreboards, security fencing and other aspects of gifting we receive from those outside groups, we certainly from a dollar standpoint got a lot more out of the gifts.\u00a0 We just haven\u2019t specifically stated it that way, but I can say with a pretty high degree of confidence that we\u2019ve gotten more in in-kind value from a dollar standpoint than we would have charging them $6.50 an hour for the fields they used.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, the Unionville Recreation Association (URA) donated over $46,000 for new scoreboards this past February.<\/p>\n

There is a community meeting planned on December 10th<\/sup> at 6:30 in the high school cafeteria.\u00a0 The Administration and board is seeking questions and comments from residents regarding the Grounds Plan.<\/p>\n

There is also a website where residents can learn about the plan and submit feedback. <\/a>\u00a0To date, over 350 comments have been fielded.\u00a0 Partly due to that feedback, many parts of the project are no longer in consideration, such as the track field house or the widening of the school access street by Doe Run Road.<\/p>\n

Whitesel presented a first draft of the ten-year Long-Range Facilities Plan.\u00a0\u00a0 As borrowing for the first three years of projects would have to occur by early spring, only years 2019, 2020, and 2021 are fleshed out.\u00a0 He advised that except for ballfields safety nets ($150,000), no parts of the Grounds Plan are included until year four, where there is a $400,000 placeholder for artificial field ground preparation.\u00a0 \u201cMake no mistake about it, the next three years is about maintaining and improving our existing facilities,\u201d Whitesel assured the Board.\u00a0 He also reiterated that each year, projects will need to be put out for bid and individually approved by the board, allowing for more changes and discussion.<\/p>\n

Years one through three include more usual items such as duct work, track and field resurfacing, HVAC replacement and bathroom renovations.<\/p>\n

In other news, Director of Technology Justin Webb requested approval of a web and email monitoring system to be used with middle and high school Chromebooks.\u00a0 The state requires that schools track student web searching and emails on school devices, looking for trigger words that could indicate that a student may be in trouble or intending harm.\u00a0 Currently, District personnel spend time during working hours reviewing activity, of which 98% of the cases are completely innocent (for example, a student could be searching on the word \u201cgun\u201d for a research project).\u00a0 At a cost of under $8,000 for an eighteen-month contract, the company Securely 24 would monitor activity 24\/7 and contact District personnel\u2014day or night–within three minutes of what they deem is a credible risk.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A rainbow as seen above Unionville Elementary School as posted by the district on its Facebook page.<\/p><\/div>\n

Lastly, due to financially necessary format changes to The Times<\/em>, I am sorry to say that this is my last report.\u00a0 In January, The Times<\/em> is moving to a community submission content model due to declining ad revenue.<\/p>\n

School taxes represent the lion\u2019s share of property taxes we pay.\u00a0 Residents have a voice\u2014sometimes greater than you think.\u00a0 In the year that I have covered the board for The Times<\/em>, I have seen policies transformed based on comments and recommendations from the few people who attend the meetings.\u00a0 See what is happening with the Grounds Plan?<\/p>\n

I hope our readers will keep up-to-date and involved with the actions of our School Board via meeting attendance, the board meeting videos and through the other local news outlets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By JP Phillips, Staff Writer, The Times This past spring, the Unionville-Chadds Ford School Board hired a consultant to recommend the best use of roads, parking areas, and athletic facilities located on the high school, middle school and Unionville Elementary campuses (the Grounds Plan).\u00a0\u00a0 Since then, the proposal has been discussed and dissected. Many community […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[11719,7426,1286],"class_list":["post-41406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-facilities-plan","tag-featured","tag-unionville-chadds-ford-school-district"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41407,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41406\/revisions\/41407"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}