Please explain some of the upgrades you and the school board decided on.

The projects at the high school would consist of replacing some of the flooring. Also we will be paving at parking lots and drives leading up to the school. At Forest Dale (Elementary School), we are replacing large sections of the roof…  some paving and some work on the playground. We have some money set aside for additional technology.

What kind of technology will you be funding?

Most of (the technology) will be for students, for devices for students.

Will new carpet and paint cover all of Carmel High School or just a select few areas?

We’ve been replacing flooring at (CHS) for several years. The building is so large we can’t do it all at once, and so this will be a continuation of that in various areas of the building. I believe it includes, for example, flooring in the fieldhouse.

How did you and the school board come up with which projects to fund and which projects not to fund?

It’s based on the age and condition of our buildings, and in the case of the roof at Forest Dale, that roof had just reached its useful life, so it needed to be replaced. It’s a matter of condition of certain buildings. An example, the flooring at Carmel High School; it’s just the age and condition that it was time to replace it.

Were there other projects that came up that ultimately did not get funded?

Generally, no. We anticipate what our needs are for facilities and so it’s not a matter of choosing one or another because we are large enough that we have projects that we are doing on a regular basis, not necessarily every year, but we certainly do some things every year and some years we do more, larger projects. It’s not a matter of not doing another project. We have a schedule, and projects that really need to be done, we do first and then have a  plan as we go forward?

Can you give me a timeline of the upgrades?

Most of the work will be (completed) over the summer, but there may be some that go over the school year. But we do as much as we can over the summer when the students are not at school.