The Appleton Area School District Board of Education met 03/31/2025. During that meeting they reviewed the 5-Year Facilities Capital Improvement Plan.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
There were a few general projects planned for the 2025-2026 school year:
- Asphalt Replacement – They were going to be completely replacing the parking lot at Janet Berry Elementary and reconstructing the entire Schaefer Street parking at Easte High School.
- Capital Projects – They were going to do an engineering study on the Morgan building and its foundation which is an old stone foundation. It needs some windows and updated air-conditioning and HVAC. The building is old and the heating and cooling system was described as a “hodgepodge”.
- Roofing – They mostly need to work on Madison middle school. It was noted that roofing costs had declined to pre-Covid prices. They have a general schedule for roofs in the District that need to be worked on due to age, but that is also influenced by where actual leaks are which impacts the priority a roof will receive attention.
- Tuck Pointing – They are starting the process of going systematically through the District and checking the condition of exterior brick work and masonry. They will be focusing on the building as West High School and will be doing the entire main building of West as well as the smoke stack. They will also being doing work at Wilson in addition to some smaller projects throughout the District.
- Contingency – This was not for any specific project but just to have on hand throughout the year to deal with things like broken water heaters and HVAC units and plumbing issues—things that will happen throughout the year.
During the 2026-2027 school year they did not have many specific projects planned. Director of Facilities Joe Sargent told the Board he expected that they would still be finishing up the projects from the 2025-2026 school year.
The plan was ostensibly a 5-year plan, but really only covered the next 2 years. Director Sargent said that historically they had left their 5-year plans more generic. Every year they walk the buildings and talk with principals to get a list of their needs, and their priorities shift from year to year. They always have to take care of things like roofs, parking lots, and HVAC systems, but beyond that they don’t plan specific projects 5 years out.
Board member Ed Ruffolo asked about the asbestos abatement line item and wanted to know if there was still asbestos in any of the buildings. Director Sargent said that there was still asbestos. Typically, that gets removed when they do things like flooring and ceiling projects. Whenever a project was planned they conducted testing and if asbestos was found they hired a company to come in and handle it.
Board member Ruffolo also asked about the cameras and security systems in the buildings which he understood to be aging a bit. Director Sargent said that in the past those sorts of items had not been part of the capital improvement plan budget. For example, they had received grants from the Department of Justice, or the security systems were wrapped up into other miscellaneous projects.
Board member Ruffolo noted that the District had been focused on the referendum-funded projects about outside of those projects budgets were tight. He asked if there was anything that ought to be in the capital improvement plan but wasn’t because AASD didn’t have the time or dollars to get to it. Executive Direct of Operations Ray Przekurat said that one of the bigger issues was aging buildings. He mentioned the Morgan building, Columbus, Wilson, and West as buildings that they needed to do a lot of evaluation on. He noted that West still had coal bins. He thought that those buildings were ones in which they might find surprises that end up being large dollar problems to take care of.
It was mentioned that outside of the referendum projects, they upgrade floors, ceilings, and lights in classrooms relatively slowly. They have around 1000 classrooms and are able to update around 10 a year.
The overall lighting plan across district buildings was discussed. They are replacing some lights with LEDs. New construction included LEDs but transitioning existing buildings to LEDs was a longer process and was hard to do because it required a lot of money. Apparently, in cost between $12,000 and $15,000 to replace the ceiling and install LED lights in just one room. There was also some concern about what would happen when LEDs eventually burned out and needed to be replaced.
View full meeting video here: https://www.youtube.com/live/5s46odnMO_o?si=KKWtJBLl3wAFTbRg
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