Does this sound like any other school district you know?
REGIONAL – ISD 2142 drained the contingency fund for its $78.8 million school restructuring project nearly a month ago, but was able to replenish it by levying additional health and safety dollars.
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A typical example is the mess made by one of JCI’s sub-contractors, which ripped up playground equipment from Orr and shipped it to Tower. School board members were surprised to hear the objections from Orr residents, since they were unaware that the playground equipment (which had been paid for and built entirely by local donations and volunteers) was even being moved. No one from JCI or the district office would take responsibility for the decision and school board members ordered that the equipment be returned to Orr. At the time, JCI officials promised the equipment would be brought back to Orr at no charge, but the school board has since learned that the whole playground fiasco was billed to the district, to the tune of $31,000.
Of course, that’s peanuts compared to some of the big ticket disasters. School board members are now wondering why the taxpayers are footing the bill for potentially millions of dollars in additional expenses related to a long list of errors, mostly code violations, in the original architectural drawings produced by Architectural Resources, Inc., the architectural firm hired by JCI for the project.
