The Warwick School Committee held a special meeting Tuesday night to go over the four bids submitted in response to the Request for Proposals (RFP) the committee issued for a long-term planning consultant.

But while the committee considers the bids, there doesn’t appear to be any flexibility on making $2 million in fire code improvements to Aldrich and Gorton Junior High Schools. According to a decision rendered by the Rhode Island Fire Safety Code Board, the department has until June 1, 2015 to outline a course of action. Should the decision be to keep the schools open, the upgrades need to be completed by the opening of school in 2016.

Keith Burlingame, executive director of the board, said yesterday that according to his recollection, “there is nothing of a life threatening nature” to the buildings, otherwise more immediate action would have been required. “This is not a death trap waiting for a disaster,” he said.

Nonetheless, the board’s ruling is for the department to return with an answer that it will close the schools or fully comply with all the directives.

David LaPlante, schools director of buildings and grounds, said yesterday if the schools were to remain open, right now upgrades would need to be completed by Sept. 15, 2015.

“If the buildings remain open, we would notify the Board in June and ask for a year’s variance to have the work completed in the summer of 2016,” he said.

LaPlante said two months ago, he went before the Board and requested a variance but was told no more extensions and to render a decision by June 1.

“They weren’t going to issue a variance then to put our feet to the fire and make us make a decision because we kept going back to them and saying they’re working on a decision,” LaPlante said.

LaPlante said the school department is 90 percent completed with its planned fire code upgrades on buildings throughout the district.

“This summer [2015], we’re doing Drum Rock and the West Bay Collaborative program at Greene,” he said. “After that, all that’s left is Aldrich and Gorton.”

Since the district is 90 percent complete with the upgrades, LaPlante said, “I don’t see a reason why they wouldn’t approve a variance request. If we decide to close the schools, we’re hoping the Board tells us we don’t need to do the upgrade work.”

But before making a decision on the schools, the committee is looking for input from consultants on what to do long-term.

Twenty-four companies initially expressed an interest and requested the RFP but the following four were the only ones to submit a bid: Robinson Green Berretta Architects from Providence with a base bid of $396,900; Lerner Ladds Bartels from Pawtucket with a base bid of $325,000; Studio JAED with offices in Delaware, Maryland and Rhode Island with a base bid of $150,000, an expanded bid of $376,600, a bid combining the two of $526,600, and an additional bid on top of that of $96,760 for a total bid of $623,360; and Symmes Maini & McKee Associates (SMMA) from Cambridge, Mass., with a bid of $167,000 for a 90-day study, as called for in the RFP, as well as a bid for a post-90-day study of $113,043 for a total of $280,243. SMMA also submitted an alternative bid of $185,000.

Prior to Tuesday’s meeting, which was open to the public, each school committee member received the bids to look over individually but the meeting was the first time the committee came together to discuss the bids.

School Committee Chairwoman Beth Furtado called it a brainstorming session, saying the bids were similar yet dramatically different.

“Some of them seemed more educationally-driven versus structurally-driven,” she said. “We need to decide how we’re going to analyze the data.”

Karen Bachus said two of the bids really stood out to her as being the best.

“Robinson Green Berretta and SMMA were the most helpful,” she said, adding that SMMA broke their bid down nicely. “We can afford parts of it. I think it’s a reasonable place to begin and go from there.”

Before the discussion went any further, Rosemary Healey, director of human resources and legal counsel for the school department, said there’s a legal standard that must be met, which is the selected bid must be the lowest bid meeting specifications.

“You need to score each proposal to see where they fall and decide on how you’re going to score and rank the proposals to determine the lowest bid meeting specifications,” she said.

Committee member Jennifer Ahearn said she looked at the proposals by comparing the cost associated with the work to the number of hours it would take. She said not all the proposals specified the number of hours.

“SMMA had an explicit breakdown of where they would spend time, how much it would cost, and what they would do, which is what we asked for,” she said.

Ahearn agreed with Bachus that the two most helpful bids were from SMMA and Robinson Green Berretta.

“The other two didn’t have as much information on where they would spend the money,” she said.

“You need to come up with an official scoring sheet since no one person can decide this, so that if you’re challenged, you can explain it,” Healey said. “What categories are you assigning points to and how are you ranking them?”

Bachus said the committee may have to scale down its request due to finances, as all four proposals exceed the $150,000 the committee earmarked to hire a consultant.

“We put everything on the plate,” she said, referring to what the committee asked for in the RFP.

Eugene Nadeau said all four proposals were “excellent across the board” and asked if the committee could change or lessen its requirements.

“If you waive a requirement, you have to waive it for all four so you’re comparing apples to apples,” Healey said, adding that if they change the RFP too much, it may have to go out to bid again. “You can narrow the scope of the work, but depending on how much, you could put it out to bid again because you might be able to get it cheaper.”

Healey said the committee has to do more than just read through the proposals and decide what sounds good and what doesn’t.

“Whatever is accepted will be a benefit to the Warwick School Department because it will be a 10 to 15-year plan,” Nadeau said. “If nothing comes close to the $150,000 and we have to approve a larger contract, we ought to be aware that additional money is very worthwhile. I look forward to approving a contract we can be proud of moving forward.”

Committee member Terri Medeiros said she looked at the proposals and categorized them by city demographic and what was most similar to Warwick.

“Spending $150,000 of the kids’ money is a burden, but we’ve committed to doing that and we can’t spend more than $150,000, so I looked at where was $150,000 similar between the plans in terms of equality and then rank them that way,” she said.

Bachus said that SMMA not only provided the lowest bid, but also included an alternate fee proposal, “which isn’t outrageous.”

Healey said based on the point system developed as part of the RFP, the committee has already prioritized certain areas.

“Usually we go through bids with a Yes/No checklist, did it meet this requirement? Yes or No,” she said. “It’s more time-consuming than it is hard, but it will be supportive in the public realm.”

Healey suggested school committee members rank the bids according to criteria prioritized in the RFP and then submit their ranking sheets to be assembled and presented at the next meeting.

Ahearn asked why every committee member had to go through the ranking process instead of just one designated person.

“If we all do it, we get five pairs of eyes on the information,” Bachus said.

“We do a disservice to the companies and the committee that already looked at this to not go through it individually because this is important,” Furtado said. “This is our charge and our job, we’re responsible.”

Furtado continued, “You may see something that I don’t, and Terri may see something that both of us miss.”

Nadeau said he sees no reason why money should be a problem, especially if the RFP requirements are condensed.

“If we need an additional $150,000 to come up with $300,000, we have a $162 million budget,” he said. “For such an encompassing, long-term outlook, any money we need is well worth it. The money should be there for this, we need it to be there.”

Furtado disagreed.

“If we spend $300,000 on a project that should have cost $150,000, that’s $150,000 less in the classroom or on the athletic fields,” she said. “It has cost the district millions of dollars every year by not doing this.”

Bachus said this should have been done 20 years ago.

“It’s time to put our money where our mouth is,” she said.

Ahearn asked about Aldrich and Gorton junior high schools, as both buildings are in need of fire code upgrades if they are to remain open.

Under the recommendation of the Long Term Facilities Planning Committee originally tasked with studying the district and recommending where consolidation should occur at the secondary level when it was deemed that secondary buildings are operating at half capacity and enrollment continues to decline, Warwick Veterans High School would have been closed for a year while it was upgraded to become a super junior high school then reopened to house students from Aldrich and Gorton, which would have been closed, and Vets students would be split among Pilgrim and Toll Gate.

That recommendation was tabled by the School Committee in favor of hiring an outside consultant to study the district and develop a long-term plan.

“We need an answer one way or the other by June 1,” LaPlante said in response to Ahearn. “If they stay open, Aldrich and Gorton have to be updated.”

Nadeau wasn’t satisfied.

“I can’t believe the state would not allow us adequate time when there are other cities and towns that haven’t even started fire code upgrades,” he said.

LaPlante responded, “They’ve given us eight years. Two to three months ago we requested another variance and they were emphatic that we come back with a Yes or No and how we plan to do the upgrades. There are no more extensions.”

Furtado said if the buildings remain open and are not upgraded, the school department would be fined per violation per day the buildings aren’t up to code.

“They will shut us down,” she said.

Healey pointed out that if consolidation does ultimately take place, the department would need to know before June 1 because consolidation would involve “a ton of staff transitions.”

Before adjourning, Furtado said she would provide each committee member with a digital copy of the evaluation sheet for use in ranking each bid proposal and asked that they be submitted back to her to be assembled and presented for discussion at the next meeting, which will be open to the public and is scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 17 at 5:30 p.m. at the school administration building, 34 Warwick Lake Avenue, Warwick.

Furtado said the committee could select a bidder at that meeting.