Budget pressures. Workforce gaps. A fast-moving AI landscape. Charter school competition.
These aren't tomorrow's problems for K12 facilities leaders — they're today's. At the 2025 K12 Facilities Forum, some of the country's most seasoned district operations chiefs sat down for a frank conversation about what's keeping them up at night and, more importantly, what they're doing about it.
The panel brought together David Bates, COO at Dallas ISD; Wanda Paul, Chief Operations Officer at Broward County Public Schools; and Chris Farkas, Deputy Superintendent for Facilities at Hillsborough County Public Schools — three leaders who collectively oversee facilities for hundreds of thousands of students.
The conversation opened with a deceptively simple question: who sets the priorities in your district? The answer from all three panelists was immediate and consistent — the student experience.
"Facilities, maintenance, transportation, food service — we can shut a district down if we wanted to," said Bates. "But we look at our priorities through the lens of the student experience. It allows our voice to be a little more heard at the table."
The bus that picks up the kid in the morning. The breakfast line. The safety of the hallways before first period. These are facilities concerns, and every one of them shapes whether a child arrives at the classroom door ready to learn.
"Keep kids first. A lot of people say it, but you have to embody it. You have to believe it. You have to practice it every single day."
— Wanda Paul, COO, Broward County Public Schools
Budget issues topped the list of concerns — not as a new problem, but as a deepening one. What was notable wasn't the scarcity itself; it was how these leaders are choosing to respond to it.
Bates described a disciplined pivot toward return-on-investment thinking: scrutinizing every vendor relationship, mapping the routes that district vehicles make, and evaluating what to utilize in-house versus outsource. Paul went further, describing a line-by-line audit of her division's contracts and consultant agreements.
"When you start putting your hands on the budget, a light bulb goes off," she said. "Are we really spending this amount of money? And are we targeting that money toward kids?"
Farkas framed the sustainability challenge in a way that will resonate with any leader who has ever done their job too well: Florida’s half-penny sales tax funded the best school opening in Hillsborough's district's history — fewest AC breakdowns, safest conditions, best overall experience. Now comes the hard part: convincing the community to reauthorize the funding that made it possible.
"I'm worried we've done too good of a job," he said. "And the community doesn't see why we need it."
"Clickbait is for negative stories. The positive work happening behind the scenes doesn't get told, but we have to make that connection and communicate it."
— Chris Farkas, Deputy Superintendent, Hillsborough County Public Schools
The skilled trades pipeline is thinning at exactly the wrong time. Farkas put it plainly: "I've got a bunch of guys who are 65 and a bunch who are 22, and not a lot in between." The private sector can pay electricians and HVAC technicians double what a school district can offer, and that gap is not closing on its own.
All three panelists pointed to CTE programs as a meaningful lever — but stressed that recruitment has to start earlier, with more intentionality. Bates described a signing-day ceremony for career institute graduates, complete with a maintenance hat and a truck ready to roll on day one. He also launched pop-up job fairs at school campuses, targeting parents of enrolled students. The result: custodial vacancy rates dropped from 25% to 2%. "They've got a vested interest in that school," he said. "It creates a very small-town feel."
Paul was direct about the broader obligation: "We have to be the best employer. We have to treat people fairly and honestly, and we need to do a better job selling the honor of working in a school district."
No conversation in K12 facilities leadership is complete without AI, and the panel was no exception. But the discussion moved quickly past theory and into practice.
Bates described embedding AI into Bluebeam to automatically flag design errors during architectural reviews — catching things like a PVC pipe tied into a century-old cast iron. Work that used to pull supervisors out of the field for days now gets surfaced as a list of red flags reviewable from a phone. "They love it," he said. "They'd never liked coming in and working with professional services anyway."
Farkas issued a challenge to the room: "I bet 90% of the people here don't use AI in their daily function beyond writing emails. How do we make it more palatable for all of our employees?"
His call to action is important, and Paul agreed: "Businesses have already embedded it (AI) into their very fabric. The more we invest in it, the better it is for us."
Watch the full discussion here: