Individual Learning Strands
Training Schedule
Presenters
Individual Learning Strands
Planning
This session presents a comprehensive overview of the various components of school facility planning, with an emphasis on the leadership skills necessary to implement them. Specifics include:

  • Preparing to be the planning leader
  • Building and managing your planning team
  • Essentials of good school facility planning
  • Development of the school facility master plan
  • Steps and strategies for implementing the plan
  • Identifying and securing resources and integrating them into your plan
Consultants: Determining the Need and Coordinating the Activities
This session addresses how a facility leader utilizes in-house staff and consultants to most effectively advance district goals, with emphasis on legal issues and how to proceed with the hiring process. Topics include:
  • In-house staff/outside consultants – pros and cons
  • The various categories of typically used consultants
  • Overlaps and gaps in consultant services
Architect Selection, Educational Specifications and the Design Process
This session details the necessary steps to ensure district facilities will effectively and efficiently support district goals. Specifics include:
  • Compliance with qualification-based selection
  • Managing the Educational Specifications process and product
  • Leading the school design process
  • Phases of the design process and team roles and responsibilities
  • The role of the Division of the State Architect (DSA)
School Sites: Selection, Acquisition and Management This session gives attendees an understanding of the elements associated with school siting and acquisition issues, as well as guidance on management of declining or shifting enrollments and surplus sites. Specifics include:
  • A practitioner's guide to California Department of Education (CDE) regulations and policies for site approval
  • Step-by-step guidance through the land acquisition process and how to manage it, including:
    • Site selection
    • Negotiations with property owners
    • Eminent domain, appraisals, and purchase contracts
  • Optimal management of facility resources
  • Navigating the challenges of declining and shifting enrollment
  • Surviving the politics of school siting
State and Local Agencies: Effective Partnering
This session identifies and describes the importance of collaborating and coordinating with local and state agencies for the purposes of planning, funding, approval and construction of school facilities. Specifics include:
  • Planning schools – collaboration with local agencies
  • Taming the CEQA beast
  • Promises and pitfalls of joint-use projects
  • Help from Sacramento – the Legislature and State Agencies
  • Building bridges for bonds

School Facilities Finance
This session provides an understanding of school finance. Specifics include:

  • A comprehensive review of the School Facilities Program eligibility, access and accountability
  • Matching funds – local state and federal – including:
    • Developer fees
    • Redevelopment dollars
    • GO bonds
    • QZAB
    • RRMA
    • Williams SFERA
    • E-Rate
Public School Construction
This session delivers a comprehensive understanding of public school construction in California, taking participants in real-world detail through both new construction and modernization processes and procedures to assist them in understanding and managing this work. Specifics include:
  • Project delivery methods
    • Design-bid-build
    • Design-build
    • Construction Management (CM)
    • Construction Management-At-Risk
    • Lease-leaseback
    • Piggyback bidding
    • Joborder contracting
  • Pre-bid, bid and award
  • Construction phase – life in the trailer
  • Construction disputes and claims
  • Occupancy, commissioning and closeout
  • Managing modernization
  • Assessing the completed project
School Facilities Maintenance and Operations
This strand presents the information and tools necessary for a leading a successful M&O department, including:
  • Maintenance master-plans
  • Maintenance budgets and funding
    • Deferred maintenance
    • RRMA
    • General Fund
  • How Williams has changed M&O
  • Why build it if you can't maintain it
    • Staffing ratios
    • Cost/benefits of effective maintenance
    • Leadership on maintenance issues
    • Improving maintenance with technology, staffing and communication
Program Management and Accountability
This session provides a synthesis of material presented throughout the Academy: leadership, coordination, communication and accountability.
  • Program management essentials
  • Care and feeding of Bond Oversight Committees
  • Communication strategies
  • Accountability to the district and the community