Price tag to upgrade school facilities: $100 million

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

“You need to know you have $100 million in school facilities needs.”
That was the sentence Smyth County’s school board and a surprisingly small audience of mostly school administrators anticipated and dreaded Monday: the bottom line from MGT of America’s school facilities study over the winter.
The words came during a master plan presentation from Dr. Ed Humble, MGT’s director of educational facilities planning and partner in charge of handling strategic planning and public involvement in the facilities study.
That staggering figure is the estimate of the cost of implementing all of MGT’s recommendations for bringing the county’s schools up to par on their physical condition, educational suitability, technology readiness, and site condition.
Physical condition is the state of a school building itself in its walls, windows, floors, ceilings, plumbing, and climate control, Humble explained. Educational suitability is how well a room used for music instruction, for example, functions in that role. Technology readiness is a building’s ability to house the infrastructure needed to operate computers, their networks and related equipment, an issue in most older buildings. Site condition refers to the state of school grounds, including vehicular traffic areas.
All of the county’s schools were assessed at a high level of detail during the study. Assessments for each measure of condition resulted in a score for each and a school score, all reflecting the urgency of need for improvements.
The study team also reviewed community and school demographics to learn and project current and future needs, and the school system’s educational programs.
The team also sought direct input from the public in a series of meetings called charrettes that MGT consultant Dr. Bill Carnes, director of the study, mentioned several times Monday as vitally important to the development of a master plan.
MGT’s master plan for Smyth County is enormously complicated, as Carnes and Humble observed, and actually comprises a half-dozen options, any of which, or a combination, or none, the school board may opt to pursue. One of the goals of the study, Humble said, is to find ways to solve facility problems without building new schools.
“Having 13 schools in this division is probably too many,” Humble said in March 2006. There are 14 if you add Smyth Career and Technology Center.
The options collectively include construction of new schools, particularly a second elementary school in Marion, renovations of others, and combinations and closures. Each option consists of some variation on that theme. Pondering the suggested possibilities is akin in complexity to finding the most accommodating of all possible seating arrangements for a 14-guest dinner party at a table for perhaps 12.
Add to that the consideration to be given to doing the work in prioritized phases and the brow-furrowing contemplations take on Sudoku-like proportions.
Humble’s goal of avoiding new school construction opened a door to ideas of consolidation, a supposedly hot-button issue to which the charrette participants as a group, Carnes said, were not as vehemently opposed as they were expected to be.
Consolidation for good reasons well communicated would not be unreasonably opposed, Carnes predicted Monday.
Strong communications with the public is crucial, he said, no matter what final course is chosen.
Some of the options’ components included closure of Sugar Grove Combined School because of its small enrollment, while other plans might take advantage of the building’s surplus space. Enrollments and space, and Chilhowie High School’s overall condition, led to an option to close CHS and send those students to Northwood, or perhaps build a politically more palatable new high school between Chilhowie and Saltville.
Every plan, to no one’s surprise, involves closing Marion Intermediate School, the poster school for the facilities study that is widely acknowledged as the most physically needy building in the county.
Early in the process, before the charrettes, consultants were reaching conclusions similar to popular opinion about that building. “Marion Intermediate scored very low,” Humble said in one of the first charrettes. “It will be a priority. You can go out of here assured our assessment will reflect it has critical needs.”
Another universal component across options is the closure of Rich Valley Elementary and sending those students next door to a renovated Northwood Middle.
Humble said the $100 million price tag troubled him, and he set about to find ways to make it more manageable. He subdivided Phase 1, that would address the most critical needs first, and created Phase 1A that would close MIS, build a new elementary school in Marion, renovate CHS, renovate Marion Primary as a K-5 school, close Rich Valley Elementary and convert Northwood Middle to K-8.
Cost: $40.9 million.
“I was still concerned at $40 million,” Humble said, so he tried a different strategy. The $100 million total, and the $40 million start, assume the work brings the buildings to a status that would earn them the highest assessment in the four condition categories without all-new construction.
If that level were capped at 80 percent across the four measures – still creating excellent schools, Humble said—the price drops to $30 million.
“I don’t know what’s reasonable in Smyth County, but I know $30 million is more reasonable than $100 million,” Humble said, “and 30 is something you can fight for.”
That doesn’t let the school division off the hook, as school board chairwoman Laura Hall noted. “If we can get $30 million tomorrow and do these things…”
“You still have $80-to-$100 million in needs,” Humble responded.
“Is it better to ask for $30 million and then go back for $70 million?” Hall asked.
“Our recommendation is to say you need $100 million but you’ll start with $30 million,” Humble said. “It would be a mistake to think you can spend $30 million now and you’re done.”
MGT appears to cover all the bases in its studies. The efficiency study it conducted for the school division a couple of years ago was comprehensive in its examination and reporting on how well the school system operates. On Monday, MGT’s presentation did not end with its prescription for a healthy school system. Carnes presented supplemental recommendations for how to get there from here.
Among Carnes’ recommendations was to investigate revenue sources like the state Literary Fund often tapped for capital projects, and the county which has the right to issue bonds. He suggested asking the county supervisors for a resolution creating a line item in the county budget “that truly rewards efficiency. If you are efficient and dollars are left over, they roll over for capital expenses.”
The school division regularly reports a surplus at the fiscal year end, and the supervisors have twice approved its application toward small capital projects like school parking lot paving.
Carnes also recommended the division look into opportunities permitted under the Virginia legislature’s 2002 Public-Private Education Facilities and Infrastructure Act. The act allows private vendors to “acquire, design, construct, improve, renovate, expand, equip, maintain or operate qualifying projects” with approval of local government. Qualifying projects include “any facility that is operated as part of the public school system….”
Carnes repeated the call for communication with the public.
“Whatever you decide, communicate it well and then keep your promises.”
MGT provided full and detailed copies of the report to Superintendent Dr. Mike Robinson and school board members. Robinson said he is considering posting some of the content to the school division’s Web site, http://www.scsb.org.
The school board will schedule a work session with Carnes and Humble once the array of options has been pared down to a few chosen ideas.