School Construction Creates Jobs, Student Innovation

In a commentary first published by the Connecticut Post, Jorge Garcia, the city’s Director of Public Facilities and Deborah Caviness, Senior Program Administrator for the Small & Minority Business Office, highlight the benefits of new school construction.

Thirteen thousand students in the Park City will attend new or renovated schools in the near future as the City continues working to provide kids with the tools to one day compete for 21st-century jobs.

In every city neighborhood, Mayor Bill Finch is building new schools and renovating existing ones.

By the time the initiative is completed, the city and state will have invested $725 million in school construction for our children. That’s what this is about.

We see this as much more than an investment in brick and mortar. This is an investment in our future that our families and children deserve.

Take a look at our Aquaculture regional high school. It is equipped with a flybridge simulator that gives our students the skills to navigate a ship into any port in the world. Students have access and hands-on experience navigating an underwater rover, the same technology used during the unprecedented environmental cleanup effort following the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

At the Fairchild Wheeler Inderdistrict Magnet School, we are providing students with the latest technology and tools to prepare them for jobs in engineering, the bio-technology field and the information technology field. At the Bridgeport Military Academy, our students interested in careers as first responders or in the military work hand-in-hand with police officers, firefighters, medical professionals and members of our military to prepare them to serve our communities and country.

In the end, our goal is to provide children with facilities and resources that create a dynamic, safe and healthy learning environment.

We are working toward completing every project, whether building a new school or renovating an existing one, at the highest level of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).

LEED stands for green building leadership. LEED is transforming the way we think about how buildings and communities are designed, constructed, maintained and operated across the globe. This investment is about our children.

It also is about creating jobs in Bridgeport.

Our aggressive school construction program is providing a boost to our local economy by creating jobs and giving small business an opportunity to grow and thrive.

Created in 2008, one of Mayor Finch’s first initiatives after being elected, the Small and Minority Business Resource Office (SMBRO) provides training and connections for entrepreneurs to create businesses and compete for city contracts, such as school construction projects. Since that time, the city has hired its first African American construction manager for a school project and seen four minority owned businesses create joint ventures with established firms.

Recently, through the efforts of SMBRO, more than $50 million has been awarded to small, minority and women-owned businesses on our four most recent school construction projects. On these four construction projects–Black Rock Elementary School, Fairchild Wheeler Magnet High School, Roosevelt Elementary School and Longfellow Elementary School–100 out of 101 subcontracting opportunities were awarded to minority or women-owned businesses.

This means we have helped 100 small businesses get an opportunity to succeed, grow and create jobs for Bridgeport residents.

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17 comments

    1. Part I–Mayor Finch was elected as a Senator in 2000 and then he was elected as Mayor in both 2007 and 2011. Jorge Garcia was a custodian in 2009 and was promoted directly to interim facilities Director for the BBOE in 2009 at a salary of over $115,000 although he did not have a single qualification to hold the position. He does not have so much as a certification in heating & cooling, never mind a degree in engineering. After Ben Barnes, former BOE Director of Finance and the current OPM for CT was hired, Sauda, Bobby and I repeatedly brought up his outrageous salary and complete lack of qualifications for this position and salary, therefore his salary was reduced to $90,000 and he was required to report to Ben Barnes. Shortly after the BBOE takeover, he was forced out by Dr. Ramos at the urging of the BRBC and the consulting firm completing the operational audit. Within months, Jorge Garcia was hired by Mayor Finch as a deputy director in public works at almost $100,000 per year. Jorge Garcia could not write this letter if his life depended on it.

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      1. Part II–Fairchild Wheeler Inter-district Magnet School was the brainchild of Claire Gold, the former Westport superintendent. She joined forces with Lois Liddy, a SHU professor of education and Dr. Dworkin, a former administrator and BBOE grant writer, who was instrumental in obtaining the initial funding. Together, these three individuals created the vision for a STEM-themed high school. The original idea was broached in 2004, well before Finch became Mayor. The BBOE voted to approve it in 2005, Bobby Simmons was the only BBOE member who saw the school from its inception to its grand opening in 2013. This is the most expensive high school built in the state’s history at a cost of $126,000,000. This school originated under the Fabrizi administration, not Finch’s. It took nine years from start to finish when it opened in 2013. The school was completely stalled under the Finch administration because of his battles with Timothy Herbst, Trumbull first selectman. Governor Malloy and the legislature had to intervene to get the project moving again. Mayor Finch and his administration’s attempt to take credit for this school is an absolute insult to Claire Gold, Lois Libby, Dr. Dworkin and Mayor Fabrizi.

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        1. Part III–Aquaculture School. The Connecticut State Board of Education approved the Bridgeport Board of Education’s request to designate Aquaculture School as a Regional Vocational School in 1983, well before Bill Finch was elected as a senator in 2000 and mayor in 2007. The school broke ground in 1991 and opened its doors in February 1993. The legislature passed a special act (House Bill 5717) in 1989 that allocated $7.5 million to build the school. A 30,000 square foot addition was built in August 2010. This was already in the planning stages prior to Finch being elected as mayor in 2007. It currently serves approximately 500 students, approximately 300 from the suburbs and approximately 200 from Bridgeport. Students only take 2-3 courses and then spend the rest of their day in a traditional high school in their suburban town or for Bridgeport students, Central, Harding or Bassick. Once again, it would be inappropriate for Mayor Finch to take credit for this school.

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          1. Part IV–Bridgeport Military Academy was initiated by Paul Vallas and was quickly opened in 2013. Kathy Flynn, recently retired BBOE employee, had always been passionate about creating a First Responders High School. It does offer more than just military training. It also offers a first responder curriculum. Although naming it the First Responders Academy would have been more appropriate, Vallas was insistent it be named the Bridgeport Military Academy. Vallas assigned the creation of the school to Ms. Flynn and she was the driving force behind its development. It was developed so quickly it was placed within the Fairchild Wheeler Inter-district Magnet School and there was no long-term plan for its permanent location. It had a tumultuous first year with significant leadership issues and the BBOE received quite a few complaints. The Fairchild Wheeler Schools were expanding grades this year, therefore BMA was forced to be relocated. It recently opened in a vacant Catholic school on Boston Avenue. Mayor Finch had absolutely nothing to do with this school. There is no new school building or advanced technology. In fact, it is in a very old building with very few bells and whistles. Once again, any effort to take credit for this school by Mayor Finch would also be highly inappropriate.

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        2. Maria Pereira, as I said earlier, “I didn’t see where Jorge Garcia and Deborah Caviness give any credit or thanks to John Fabrizi, the person behind all these projects.”

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  1. More re-election Puffery by the administration. Kooris had a similar puff piece a couple of weeks ago. Show me the money in how many Bridgeport MOB’s or WOB’s and Bridgeport Peeps benefited from these much-ballyhooed projects.

    This new press guy is a real Puff Daddy. 🙂

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  2. Gee, do you think the article is a little slanted? Having two of the mayor’s hacks write this puff piece and have it published is a waste of time. What purpose has publishing this BS served?
    I would like to have Garcia tell me exactly how many union jobs for Bridgeport residents have there been in this school building binge we are on. Jesus folks, the election is over a year away.

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  3. There is a central contradiction in the letter. While the thesis of the letter focuses on the importance of building schools, the examples that are provided are not about new schools. Instead, they are about curricula. For example, the letter highlights students at the Aquaculture school can now have hands-on experience with an underwater rover and how children at the military academy can work hand-in-hand with police officers. These are more reflective of pedagogy than school construction, so he seems to contradict himself, or at the very least these are just not the best examples to support his claim.

    Finally, the letter states $725 million has been brought to the local economy. Although it is fair to assume this connection, specific statistics are not provided that support this claim. For example, to what extent do Bridgeport residents receive jobs (versus outside residents) and what kind of jobs are provided? Stats displaying the rate of unemployment over the past 5-10 years in conjunction with the years in which schools were constructed would also be helpful and is easy to do with publicly available data. This would reveal if years of school construction are accompanied by increases in employment.

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  4. Andmar, the city and the unions always make a big deal about the Project Labor Agreements that state the construction projects for municipal construction will all be union and will have union members who live in the community as the first hired. That is totally wrong about residents working on projects. As long as one worker from any union is on the site they count that as adhering to the PLA. The city and the contractor cannot tell us how many union members from Bridgeport worked on these school projects.

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  5. This is clearly just re-election puffery as suggested.

    Nothing personal, but the City’s ‘Small and Minority Business Office’ is unnecessary, simply fluff and an excuse to place politically connected people on the city payroll.

    Lennie, can you request the list of the “100 out of 101 subcontracting opportunities were awarded to minority or women-owned businesses” and share with us?

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  6. “By the time the initiative is completed, the city and state will have invested $725 million in school construction for our children. That’s what this is about.”

    Could anybody have stated this investment without the press release? Anyone on the Council, who sat on the School Building Construction Committee that is located nowhere on the City or Schools web offering?

    This has been and still is a multi-year program that until recently has been 80% funded by the State of CT and 20% by the City. The approvals by the City Council for use of Capital funds have not presented the overall perspective and have left Council members in recent years wondering about the big picture. But they still voted for whatever has been requested.

    Assuming the total presented is accurate, Bridgeport’s 20% would have added $145 Million to our City debt. But the great investment is while posting the liability of $145 Million we also added $725 Million of school buildings to the asset side of the balance sheet. Is that enough for the balance sheet to recover from the real VALUATION LOSSES to land and buildings owned by the City that have been listed as assets? What loss you say? Well if the City is using the 2008 valuations rather than the more current 2013 valuations that have disappeared in some strange manner after the City paid the appraisal firm $300,000, could Citywide asset values have dropped by hundreds of millions?

    The project management personnel found lots of paying work. The large companies have had steady work, but how much this has trickled down to Bridgeport residents and business taxpayers creating real jobs from $725 Million is not really covered in this article, nor was it meant to be.

    There are no good metrics when you hide the assessments of where you started, what you did, in what time period, what $ were consumed, and where you are today. Ask the folks at Bassick High how their priority roofing project, at the top of the list in 2010, has been ignored? They are still trying to figure out what happened. By the way shouldn’t BOE or Public School people be providing the latest and greatest trotting out of what school buildings can accomplish? Or are they too busy trying to make up for lost time on many transitions from two hole plugs to 21st Century technology to comment at this moment? Political puffery? You bet. If you look at the budget submission for SMBRO in the current budget, you can see Deborah Caviness did not submit current data for her department metrics. Why not? Who is accountable for doing their own work in the City?

    When program or budget changes are made, the public should have notice, the discussions should be in public and the metrics should be easy. Mushrooms grow in the dark. At least most of them are edible. But corrupt practice grows in the dark, too. Questions deserve answers, and the current leadership uses a dark curtain as a “blackdrop.” It is opaque and generally soundproof and the public is not even present for the performance. Time will tell.

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  7. So public employees are paid by the taxes from the private sector. Schools are built by the taxes that come from the private sector. Both federal and state grants (i.e. taxes) come from the private sector. How is that creating jobs???
    Creating jobs is when a private business comes in, hires, pays its employees, buys its equipment and inventory from another private business. That’s how an economy works.

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