School board sticking to guns

By JIM TALBERT\Staff
TAZEWELL – School board members are sticking to their plan for renovating county schools.
At its Oct. 8 meeting the board voted 5-0 to continue with its proposal to renovate all of the county school buildings. The vote comes despite a request from the board of supervisors that they look at building three new schools.
The resolution from the supervisors asked the school board to supply them with information regarding the cost of building three new schools for grades k-8. Cookie Johnson made the motion to stay with the original plan.
“This was the second time we have taken a unanimous motion from our board to request funding for upgrading facilities. One of the things that came out was, I felt, the board of supervisors is not going to give us the money to build three new schools at one time,’’ she said.
Johnson said she was very surprised by the supervisors’ action. “I feel like we need to stick to our plan, a unanimous plan,’’ she said. Robert “Spot’ Steele said parents expected the board to move forward with a plan for air conditioning.
“I feel like we are at a turning point here. We have to do something,’’ he said. Steele said the Kahn study was requested by the board of supervisors and most of the information the supervisors wanted was in that and prior studies.
Board Member Steve Davis advocated giving the supervisors the information they want. Davis said he agreed that the renovation work was the way to go. “I do think we have to recognize that the body that will fund this project has passed a unanimous resolution requesting this information,’’ he said.
Davis said the information was in some of the other plans and probably could be gathered and sent to the supervisors. “I’m not sure it would cost a lot of money to give them what they are asking for,’’ he said.
Davis said it was one supervisor who said he would not vote for more than $25 million regardless. He said the others wanted to see the numbers before making the decision.
“I think we are almost obligated to provide the information they asked for,’’ he said. Chairman Mike Dennis said the information could be gathered from the other reports.
Dennis said he agreed the information needed to go to the board but was not sure it would be doable in 30 days.
Davis said the board could pull the information together and present it. He said the board should submit both plans and ask for a decision at the November meeting. “Unless a majority of their members feel that consolidation has a great chance of happening that we terminate that idea and vote on the plan we’ve already submitted,’’ he said.
Superintendent of Schools Dr. Brenda Lawson said the school system should stay with the current plan and stress that two schools not in the plan be included if the money is available. Lawson said one of the two firms the board has retained for architectural fees said the information the supervisors wanted could be obtained in 30 days but it would be mainly numbers.
Davis said the issue was an either or thing. “You either fix up the schools you have or you build and consolidate,’’ he said. Dennis asked that the motion from Johnson be amended to provide the information the supervisors wanted and also asked them to approve the $25 million for renovations.