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Dan Schmidt of Indianapolis-based Schmidt Associates Inc. architecture firm has returned from a trip to Georgia—not
the state but the former Soviet-bloc state—helping to evaluate school infrastructure there.
Schmidt was part of a three-person team that traveled to Georgia in March to participate in a project led by MGT of America
Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based international school consultancy.
The assignment involved collecting information on the country’s 2,100 schools, which are managed by a single Ministry
of Education, and determining priorities for facility improvements.
The education ministry is considering adopting the same facility-evaluation methods Schmidt Associates and MGT used to assess
Indianapolis Public Schools facilities in 2001 as part of the district’s capital improvement program.
Electricity at the Georgian schools is intermittent at best, Schmidt said, and some are still heated with small wood-burning
stoves. Officials plan to renovate or reconstruct nearly every school in the country.
Schmidt is an associate at Schmidt Associates and is the son of firm CEO Wayne Schmidt.
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