Ranking
How Projects Are Prioritized
Six inputs produce the ranked project list. This is the answer to the question every board member and every parent asks: why that school and not mine?
District leadership and the Board set the weight of each factor. When those weights change, the project list re-ranks itself — the ranking is a calculation, not a negotiation.
Facility condition and the Facility Condition Index
Cost of a facility’s identified needs measured against what it would cost to replace it.
Every building and site system was reviewed for observable deficiencies, expected remaining life, and required renewal. Those findings produce a cost, and that cost divided by current replacement value produces the Facility Condition Index. Because the FCI is a ratio, a small elementary campus and a large comprehensive high school can be ranked on the same scale.
In practice
- A roof at the end of its service life across multiple buildings
- An HVAC plant beyond economical repair
- Site paving and drainage failures affecting access
Work order history
What failed, where, and how often — brought into the plan through an API connection every two to four weeks.
A condition assessment records what an assessor could see on one day. Work order history records what has actually broken since. A system generating repeated calls moves up the list even if it looked serviceable, because repeated failure is evidence of its own. Work order data is reported by facility and by system — the plan does not publish technician-level usage or performance figures.
In practice
- Repeat calls on the same air handler through a single cooling season
- Recurring plumbing backups in one wing
- Door hardware and access control failures at a single point of entry
Facility and system age
Roofing, HVAC, electrical, plumbing and paving all come due on a schedule that can be planned for.
Building systems have known service lives. Knowing the age of each system at each campus lets the District schedule renewal before failure rather than after it — which is almost always cheaper, and avoids the collateral damage that a failure inside an occupied building causes.
In practice
- A twenty-five-year-old membrane roof approaching the end of its expected life
- Original electrical distribution at capacity for modern instructional loads
- Asphalt past the point where sealing extends its life
Urgency of the need
Health, safety, security, accessibility and critical system failure are addressed first.
Some work cannot wait for a funding cycle. Conditions affecting student and staff safety, campus security, accessibility, or the failure of a system a building depends on to operate are ranked ahead of work that is merely overdue, regardless of how the other five factors score.
In practice
- A campus without a controlled single point of entry
- Paths of travel that do not meet accessibility requirements
- Fire alarm or fire sprinkler systems that cannot be certified
Community and District input — the survey
What families, students and staff experience every day. Reported by campus.
Assessment data describes a building. It does not describe what it is like to teach in a room that overheats every afternoon, or to line up for lunch in a space that no longer fits the school. The facilities survey collects that experience directly and reports it campus by campus, so community input becomes a measured input alongside the technical ones rather than a comment received after decisions are made.
In practice
- Classroom comfort, temperature and noise reported by room
- Restroom condition and availability
- Safety of arrival, dismissal and pedestrian routes
- Whether spaces support the way the school actually teaches
Tell us what matters at your school
The plan is built on assessment data, but priorities also depend on what families, students and staff experience every day. The facilities survey takes about three minutes, it is anonymous, and results are reported by campus.
Go to the surveyEligibility for State matching funds
Projects that bring State dollars alongside local dollars stretch the District’s money further.
Two projects of equal condition and equal urgency are not equal if one qualifies for a State match and the other does not. Eligibility under the State School Facility Program, including Proposition 2, changes what a local dollar buys, so it is scored as a factor and documented project by project.
In practice
- Modernization at a campus meeting the program’s age and eligibility tests
- New construction supported by a demonstrated capacity need
- Projects where required documentation already exists in the assessment record