School Leftovers Probably $132 Million

Several months ago, The Rhino Times reported that Guilford County Schools, once it finished its $457 million building program, would have $130 million left over to play with.

At the Guilford County Schools winter retreat on Saturday, Feb. 2, the Guilford County Schools Facilities Department released a list of proposed school renovations that would use up the $71.5 million left over from the doomed $72 million airport area high school that the school board voted to kill on Tuesday, Jan. 8.

The money to fund the renovations on the list also included all the money left over from the 25 other building, renovation and maintenance projects the school board initially proposed paying for with the $457 in school bonds approved by Guilford County voters in May 2008.

The cost of the projects on the new list, which includes major renovations of 11 Guilford County Schools? A total of $132 million. That includes the money originally targeted for the airport area high school.

Facilities Department administrators claim the spending priority lists they generate are independent of the amount of money available to them – but that doesn't match the smell test.

Since the $1.2 billion 10-year "master plan" wish list released by the department in September 2011, the priority lists the Facilities Department has come up with have matched more and more precisely the amount of money left over from the school bonds approved by voters – although the Guilford County Board of Commissioners has not yet approved selling the school bonds that were originally intended for the airport area high school.

The Facilities Department, at the school board's last retreat in September 2012, presented a different priority list to spend $75 million – just about the proposed cost of the airport area high school. At that time, all administrators knew was that the airport area high school project was probably going to die.

It's pretty much a given that the $132 million list presented Saturday is the proposed cost of the airport area high school, plus the amount of money school board Chairman Alan Duncan thinks will be left over from the other projects.

The $132 million list released on Saturday does not include $21.5 million in maintenance projects that the school board voted to fund with school bond money on Oct. 9, 2012.

At that meeting, school board member Darlene Garrett made a motion for staff to come up with a new list to spend up to $25 million on maintenance projects. School board member Ed Price seconded it. Garrett argued that the November 2012 elections could generate a Guilford County Board of Commissioners that would snatch millions of dollars away from the school board before it could be spent.

Duncan said he could not bring himself to spend $25 million. He said, "To me, the elections are not persuasive at all, because we have to go through the county commissioners anyway." Duncan said he could live with spending $21.5 million. Price, the only real estate agent on the board and an inveterate haggler, said, "Would you be happy at 22.5? We're kind of negotiating a house here." Duncan said, "I would agree with that."

Garrett's theory that the school board should spend its money before the new Board of Commissioners was elected didn't accomplish much, if the school board still has $132 million in cash and bond authorization left over and the commissioners still have to vote to issue $71.5 million of the bonds.

Also, the school board never seems to learn the lesson that insulting the Board of Commissioners, who provide much of their funding and must approve issuing school bonds, isn't a good idea.

That's especially true when, as happened unexpectedly in November, the Board of Commissioners was taken over by a Republican majority, theoretically committed to cost-cutting and facing a Guilford County that is $1.1 billion in debt.

The payments on that debt, which are made by the Guilford County commissioners out of the county budget, not by the school board out of its budget, are expected to increase for the next several years. The commissioners are also facing an apparent $41 million gap between spending and revenue for the 2013-2014 fiscal year, and $106 million of that spending is estimated to be debt service.

The school board wouldn't be in this mess if it hadn't, like the Light Brigade, charged against hopeless odds to build the airport area high school, which no one really wanted. The school board pursued the airport area high school for four years without doing proper due diligence, or bothering to check whether the jurisdictions where the high school would be built wanted it, or building support for the school. Then the Facilities Department came up with the politically unsalable $75 million priority list.

To paraphrase Tennyson, "Into the Valley of Death road the 11." Or, to quote him directly, "Some one had blunder'd."

Not only did the school board not create support for the airport area high school, it sparked a last-minute revolution from supporters of older schools, led by those of High Point Central High School, who want crumbling Guilford County Schools fixed, rather than a $72 million new one built.

The $75 million priority list from September, in addition to ignoring schools with great needs for renovation, included things that weren't construction. Of the $75 million, only about $33 million would have gone to construction of any sort, namely roofing, paving, electrical upgrades, windows and doors and improvements to athletic facilities. The other $42 million or so would have gone toward technology: air-conditioning systems, security alarms, cameras, voice-over-Internet Protocol phone systems, computers, and audio and video equipment.

The $132 million list released on Saturday, after the High Point Central revolt and complaints from other schools whose supporters want real renovations, is a very different beast.

After jiggering enrollment projections, actually looking at some schools and checking Price's Magic 8-Ball, the Facilities Department came up with a list of 11 schools "considered for major renovations or replacement."

Before the High Point Central revolt, Central – despite having a miniscule library, a 150-student capacity cafeteria so tiny that most students can't eat there, hideous bathrooms, crumbling walls and walls and ceilings covered with something that may be paint or may just be dirt – wasn't on the $75 million priority list. That, even more than the school's problems, enraged High Point Central supporters.

Now, HIgh Point Central is one of the schools slated for major renovations – and is on the list for $23 million, the most of any of the 11 schools.

It's amazing what a few pitchforks and torches can accomplish.

The other schools on the "major renovations or replacement" list are, in descending order of the amounts proposed to be spent: Hunter Elementary School (a $19 million replacement); McIver Education Center, a special education school that is being replaced by two new autism and special education facilities (an $18 million renovation); Nathanael Greene Elementary School (a $17 million replacement); Guilford Middle School (a $12 million renovation); Peeler Elementary School (a $9 million renovation); Bluford Elementary School (a $9 million renovation); Morehead Elementary School (an $8 million renovation); Western Guilford High School (a $6 million renovation); and Northwood Elementary School (a $4 million renovation).

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The total is $132 million, meaning the entire list is school replacements and renovations.

Western Guilford High School was one of the schools that would have supplied students to the mythical airport area high school in the first place – although most of the proposed school's students would have come from Northwest Guilford High School, the best-performing regular high school in the county, which now has 27 mobile classrooms. In general, Northwest parents didn't want their children to go to a new school – they simply wanted new classrooms.

The mystery is: Why is Western Guilford – which has a capacity of 1,310 students without mobile classrooms and an enrollment of 1,257 – is on the list instead of Northwest, which has a capacity of 1,625 without mobile classrooms and an enrollment of 1,904.

As school board member Rebecca Buffington said of Northwest, "It's not just like we can shift some neighborhoods and make this go away."

Guilford County Schools Director of Facilities Planning Donna Bell replied, "I think that would be difficult."

That raises the issue of redistricting, the school board's least favorite and most politically fraught activity, but one it's going to have to take responsibility for doing to solve some of the school system's capacity needs.

Duncan said, "The unpleasant subject of redistricting is rising in the next year."

School board member Linda Welborn, who was elected in November, said, to laughter, "Had I known that before I came on the board ..."

Duncan replied, "It's an ever-popular conversation."

The school board can't dodge that conversation. To give just one example, High Point Central supposedly has a capacity of 1,386 – and can't use mobile classrooms because of its designation as a historic building. It has an enrollment of 1,390. That 1,386 enrollment is suspect, because High Point Central teachers, students and parents report crowded classrooms with students sitting on floors and radiators. High Point Central's enrollment is projected to increase to 1,612 by 2021.

Andrews High School in High Point, by comparison, has a capacity of 1,225 – but an enrollment of only 789, meaning it could hold 436 more students if the school board redrew the attendance zones of Central and Andrews.