Board presses district on change orders, dust and subsurface testing at West Intermediate

District construction staff told the board that since 2020 the Scranton School District has managed about $74,000,000 in construction projects across 25 jobs and 95 change orders totaling approximately $1,600,000.

Staff broke the change-order total into categories: roughly $1,200,000 related to permits, about $700,000 listed as credits, $161,000 tied to environmental abatement and roughly $650,000 to unforeseen conditions. "If you just take the permit change orders out of the mix, we're at approximately 0.6% in change orders," a staff member said.

Several directors criticized the timing of some change orders, saying late notices left them little time to review options before votes. Staff acknowledged some items had been discussed at administration meetings and said delays sometimes stem from time-sensitive construction needs; they proposed sharing biweekly construction-integration meeting notes with board members to give earlier visibility.

Separately, directors raised air-quality and noise concerns at West Intermediate, where demolition briefly required propping a door for ventilation. Staff said negative-air machines specified in the contract would be brought in, additional plastic containment was installed, HVAC filters would be inspected more frequently and heavy demolition would be scheduled over the summer when students are not present. Staff also contracted Pinoni to run more routine air-quality testing and planned to deploy a decibel meter for noise monitoring.

A board member asked whether the site's history as an ash dump warrants subsurface geotechnical testing. Staff said subsurface investigations are normally performed during the design phase by structural engineers and that, if the board directed it, the district could issue an RFP to a geotechnical firm to perform an investigation; staff cautioned that doing a test for one site raises questions about parity across other district facilities.

Directors asked staff to provide clearer timelines, earlier notice of pending change orders and additional documentation on dust-control and monitoring plans. Staff said they will bring further feasibility and project information to the March operations meeting.