The Kentucky Department of Education’s vendor, Parsons Commercial Technology Group Inc., along with its partner, MGT of America, has assembled eight assessment teams with a standardized process to perform the facility condition and educational suitability evaluations.

Kentucky’s current construction regulations and nationally recognized best practices are the basis for the standardized questionnaires that are completed by the schools and assessors during the school visits. The list of schools to be assessed includes those identified as “category 3” or worse, as of September 2010, encompassing 145 districts.

The schedule is established and continues to be refined to accommodate testing dates and other scheduling conflicts. As of April 26, Parsons has completed 232 of the 483 scheduled facility condition assessments. In addition, MGT has evaluated 190 of those 232 schools for educational suitability. The Parsons assessors will complete their condition assessments by early June. The MGT assessors will finish their on-site visits in September as they require students in the buildings to adequately evaluate the instructional space.

The general process for each facility assessment is:

  • At least one week prior to a scheduled visit, the district office and school will be contacted to confirm the schedule for an on-site visit and discuss pre-visit preparations the district and schools need to complete.
  • On the scheduled day, the assessment team will arrive at the school’s front office, consisting of one condition assessor and one educational suitability assessor. The condition assessment team member will tour the school with a school facility employee who has knowledge of the building and can gain access to the roof, boiler, plumbing and other areas. The educational suitability team member will tour the school with the principal or a designee who has knowledge of the programs being offered in the school.
  • Following the tour, the assessment team will require space with Internet access to complete its data entry.
  • After Parsons has completed quality control of the data, a school report will be provided to the district office and principal for feedback. These reports should be available to the schools and district offices in this July.
  • The assessment team can complete most elementary schools in three hours, middle schools in four hours and high schools in five hours. These time frames include their data entry. Therefore, school personnel time is only required for the initial portion of the visit.

For more information, contact Paige Patterson-Grant at (502) 564-5279.