School:
Anne Arundel Co. Public Schools, Maryland (AACPS)
Title: Director of Facilities
Years in Education:
27 years with AACPS
Years of EDmarket membership: 1 (one of the inaugural institutional members)
Brief description of your district or school:
Anne Arundel County has 122 school buildings, 13.8 million square feet and 84,000 students
What was your first job?
Playground leader for town at AACPS – Project Manager in the Facilities Planning, Design and Construction Department
What makes your school district unique?
Anne Arundel County has 530 miles of shoreline on the Chesapeake Bay. Annapolis, the capital of Maryland, is located in Anne Arundel County and the county is located in the Baltimore Washington corridor.
What do you like best about the educational products industry?
The innovation in classroom furniture, surfaces and other facilities products.
What is your typical day like?
The Facilities Division is responsible for ensuring every school is clean, safe and ready for students and staff every single day. The division responds to work orders for repairs, designs new, renovation and addition projects and provides custodial services.
What do you like to do when you are not at work?
Play tennis, travel, ski and other outdoor activities
How has EDmarket helped you do your job better?
By providing information on best practices, new products and shared experiences.
What changes are you witnessing in educational facilities planning?
More flexible spaces with easy to move furniture, more pull out spaces or places where small groups can work and still be observed. More white board or write on surfaces.
What has made your district successful?
Utilizing a third party to provide a facility assessment of all our schools and using it as a roadmap for prioritizing projects. Our six-year capital improvement plan follows the priority list. By updating the study ten years later, it gave us an opportunity to look at enrollment growth throughout the county and reprioritize as needed.
What one piece of advice would you give others in your position?
Do a facilities assessment, follow the plan, and communicate the plan to the public.