A New Perspective on Leading Facilities

Jan Bush

BUSINESS MANAGER MURPHYSBORO CUSD 186

I love the smell of bleach in the morning! Fans of green cleaning products, please forgive me, but when I smell bleach, I think “clean.” I have always thought that “clean” meant “safe” for our students, but truly had no idea of how much I did not know until we hit the COVID-19 pandemic head on. As school leaders, we probably did not spend much time thinking about our school facilities pre-pandemic beyond staffing, planning for construction projects and overall school cleaning and maintenance. But now? My perspective of what it takes to lead school facilities means something very different than it did pre-pandemic.

Even though I am responsible for “the big picture” at my district, I am a bean counter at heart, and I like everything to be in balance – to the penny. Just when districts were worried about the unanticipated costs of COVID-19, ESSER grant funds happened. We had ESSER I, II and III, as well as ESSER Digital Equity and ESSER Digital Professional Learning Grants. WOW! My head started spinning because not only was I thinking about how to allocate these resources and account for them correctly, I was also thinking about the fact that we would be dealing with this over five different fiscal years. Wrap your head around that one!

However, what I initially perceived as a headache, I quickly realized would provide many solutions and opportunities. We now have the resources to tackle some of the challenges our districts are facing due to COVID-19 such as creating outdoor learning centers and renovating our existing buildings to adjust to post-COVID conditions, as well as improving indoor air quality with HVAC construction projects. We also now have funds available to think outside of the box with our cleaning/sanitizing solutions and do more than we have ever done before.

Taking the lead to improve school facilities means working together with your district leadership team, which should include your district facilities management team, to develop a plan for utilizing ESSER grant funds to improve the safety,

educational and emotional well-being of students. We as school district leaders have been tasked to find the balance in the utilization of ESSER grant funds between addressing the student learning losses experienced, supporting remote learning, as well as the health and safety of our students through improvements to facilities.

The focus for my presidential year at Illinois ASBO is Stronger Together, Smarter Together. As you and your district leadership teams talk through your biggest postpandemic facilities challenges, I encourage you to reach out to other Illinois ASBO members. There are districts doing wonderful and innovative things throughout the state. Go learn from each other!