School Board considers facility options Tuesday, November 18, 2008 1:19 PM EST By Lisa Andrews, Staff Writer BOYDTON — Will Mecklenburg County combine its two high schools into one facility? Will it build a new elementary school? Will the elementary schools be renovated? The Mecklenburg County School Board spent an hour discussing those options Monday evening, but no decisions were reached. School board member and facility steering committee chairman Robert Puryear thanked each of the facility committee members for their efforts before he presented the school board with the plan and options the facility committee had worked on for the last several months. The plan presented was to renovate and add additions to the county’s four oldest elementary schools. The committee was unable to come to a decision on what to do with the county’s two high schools and two middle schools that are more than 50 years old. The plan the committee presented to the school board included two options. One option was to consolidate both middle and high schools into one complex somewhere in the middle of the county with the Boydton IDA Park a possible location. The other option was to renovate the two high schools so that the middle school could occupy them and combine the two high schools into one newly built school. Puryear noted some of the pros and cons the committee had discussed such as transportation issues, equability issues, redistricting and costs. The school board thanked the members of the facility steering committee for their hard work and time they spent working on a plan for the school system. School board member Glenn Edwards asked “what happened to” the comprehensive study the schools system did in 2000 that provided a phasing plan for the school system. The study, Edwards said, indicated the need for the school system to build a new school on the western end of the county after the new South Hill Elementary School was built. He quoted a former school board member who said, “As soon as that is built (South Hill Elementary) you watch, you people will never get the school on the western end of the county.” Edwards said it seems like what the former school board member said was coming true. “I realize that some years have passed and the study (from 2000) may need to be tweaked,” Edwards noted. “But when we started tweaking and we closed Boydton Elementary School, the thing that I heard was don’t worry, we are going to build you a new school. Now we have forgotten that one.” Edwards also said offering only one option is limiting the public. School board member Sandra Tanner noted that she had recommended twice before that the school board not only look back at the 2000 study but have architects and engineers come in to help them plan and have public input sessions, and do a feasibility study as well as a detailed transportation report. School board business manager and facility committee member Jeff Jones said before things can move forward the school board must have an idea of what they want to do. Tanner also said that in her opinion the elementary school plan did not increase the student capacity at the schools enough because the facility needs for the next 20 years have to be considered. Edwards agreed that the renovations and additions proposed would simply be putting a “band-aid” on the problems as the county’s student population is growing. “We need to build for the future, not right now,” Edwards said. School board member Thomas Coleman referred to the 2007 Efficiency Review conducted through the Virginia Department of Budget and Finance. “When you look at the efficiency study, it recommended reducing (the school system) to four elementary schools for the entire county,” Coleman said. “This (the plan presented by the facility committee) doesn’t do that, at all. I thought that was the purpose of wanting to close one elementary school. Right now all we have done is crowded every elementary school beyond capacity.” Edwards said that companies coming to the area were looking at the schools and going elsewhere and that it was tax dollars and people leaving and not coming back. “I think the whole process (the facility committee) was to look at what we needed to do and bring it to the board and then the (school) board look at it as a board to improve it,” Thomas Bullock, a school board member and facility committee member, said. Bowman said later in the meeting that she had told the facilities committee that, “We (school board) may not be able to agree any better than you could.” After a full hour of discussion, officials decided to turn the meeting toward other issues. During public input, Eddie Callahan, former school board member and parent of a child in the school system, addressed the school board about the possibility of consolidating the county’s two high schools. “Schools who have tried this in areas not too far from us are now going in the other direction,” Callahan said. He shared with the board some recent articles in the Richmond paper where school systems who had created larger schools are now changing their schools back into smaller schools due to academic and discipline problems that larger schools had after going larger. Callahan also noted that with a larger school the sports teams would be playing at larger schools that prepare for a season all year long. In other business: The school board agreed to allow the county’s two YMCAs a variance in the school system’s policy. The variance will allow the YMCAs to use the buildings for free and not be required to pay for a custodian to be on the facility while in use. The stipulation is that the YMCAs are to sign a contract agreeing that only one person will have the key to the school facility. Should this be violated the YMCAs would than be responsible for any cost incurred in re-securing the building (new locks, alarm code changes) and loose the variance. The school board had initially requested $25 hour to pay for a custodian to be present while the YMCAs were using the buildings. The YMCAs had sent letters to Hill indicating that this would be a financial burden on the YMCAs that would have to be passed down to the children who participate and that it could hinder children from participating. Several on the school board were concerned about this effect on the children. Outgoing school system finance director Linette Jones provided the school board with a comprehensive update on the school system’s financial status. The report takes into account all payrolls for the school year and shows not only what has been spent in each category thus far but also what was spent in November. Jones also discussed the upcoming audit that will be done by the South Hill firm Creedle, Jones, Alga. She said the firm has estimated the audit will cost approximately $6,000 and would encompass the first quarter of the school year. The audit is being preformed as a result of the previous finance director Rick Rush’s departure and is a customary procedure. Jones said she would be speaking with the firm to discuss adding a couple of more months to the audit to include the time in which she has been with the school system. Jones began working for the school system Sept. 15 and is schedule to leave the school system Nov. 28. Jones questioned the school board about the budget process and said that the finance department would be on schedule with having the budget released by the superintendent at the Jan. 15, 2009 school board meeting. According to the budget calendar the school board will be hearing public input about the budget at the Dec. 15, 2008 regular school board meeting. She asked the board for comments about the budget process. Coleman said he would like to see the miscellaneous funds listed in such a way as the school board and the Mecklenburg County Board of Supervisors understand how the funds were acquired and where they miscellaneous funds should be applied. Jones did caution the school board as to the possibility of some budget changes when Virginia Governor Tim Kaine announces the 2009-2010 budget. She said that based on projections the school system could be forgoing some positions, getting a waiver from the state to make classrooms bigger or doing salary freezes. Jones noted many of the changes would be “last resort” measures and that the school system will stay away from cuts within instruction. She said there would be no cuts this school year. Several school board members thanked Jones for the many changes she had made to the department in the short time she was with the school system. During public input Callahan also addressed a concern about the new attendance policy under which a child is not counted as present should they leave before 10:30 a.m. He said many parents work hard to encourage their child to go to school and when the child makes an effort and the school nurse determines the child should go home the child should get credit for the day. Tanner later addressed this issue. She said that parents had contacted her about the issue because with the new policy a child will have a very hard time ever making perfect attendance because everyone has a dental or doctor appointment on occasion. Hill said that she would be meeting with the principals Tuesday and would discuss this further with them. The school board was also provided with information regarding the Virginia Department of Education’s decision to change and add to the various diplomas a high school graduate can obtain. The changes include adding an economics and personal finance credit requirement to the advanced diploma. Another change was to add two new diplomas related to career and technical education. The changes will affect students who will enter the ninth grade beginning in the 2009-2010 school year. The Enterprise will provide an article in an upcoming issue outlining the details of the various changes the state has made to diploma requirements. The school system’s director of procurement, Wade Wilson, updated the school board on how things were progressing at Boydton Elementary School. The documents were not available to the media at press time. Wilson said that he would also begin keeping up with how much labor cost is being put into the renovation of the school into the school board office. He said he is using two to four men a day at the old school in order to complete the project. Wilson said he expects to be done with the renovations in a couple of weeks. Wilson said that the recent auction of excess school items, including busses and computers, netted the school system approximately $15,000. Wilson said the school system has not completed replacing the locks at Bluestone Middle or Bluestone High Schools. Boydton Mayor Bob Salzman approached the school board to request that the vacant and abandoned old Boydton High School located adjacent to the current school board office be declared surplus, relinquishing it to the county with the recommendation that the county allow the town of Boydton occupancy. Later in the meeting the school board unanimously agreed to do so. Tanner asked the superintendent where the school system was in preparing to continue the Horizon program in the middle schools. Tanner said that she would like to see the current sixth grade students and the rising fifth grade students have the opportunity to participate in the program. Currently the Horizon program is only offered to approximately 25 seventh grade students at each of the county’s two middle schools. These students originally participated in the International Baccalaureate (IB) program but the school system was unable to continue the program this school year due to lack of funding, therefore, the students were placed in the Horizon program, which is for students who are motivated to achieve above the standard requirements. Print this story || Email this story || Comment (No comments posted.) Reader Comments The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of any of our publications within VaNcNews.com or Womack Publishing. 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