$48 million school plan rethought

The recent economic downturn is forcing officials to rethink their future school building improvement plans.

Since the school system first started looking at possible building renovation and construction possibilities, the economy has taken a turn for the worst.

“The economy has taken a real turn south and that presents a difficulty with any of these (construction and renovation) options,” Madison County School Board Chairman Jeff Early said of the possible school building improvement projects officials are considering for the future.

For the past two years, school administrators have been working to create long-range renovation plans for Madison County’s public schools. The Madison County Board of Supervisors met with the school board Nov. 5 to review its draft “capital improvement plan” – which includes large building projects and estimated costs.

School officials – who developed the draft plan at the request of the supervisors – identified approximately $48 million worth of possible future projects.
The bulk of that cost refers to renovation of the Madison County High School-Wetsel Middle School complex and the construction of a new and separate school building to serve as a middle school. School officials had not yet set a timeline for when these improvements would take place.

The large MCHS-WMS project – which includes construction to accommodate future possible growth and other instruction-related improvements – also incorporates building upgrades school officials say are needed in the immediate future.

Referring to the county’s current budget constraints, the supervisors shifted the focus of the meeting’s discussion to the building’s immediate needs, which Superintendent Brenda Tanner identified as:

• Re-doing the bathrooms at both the high school and the middle school.

• Improving the lighting, ventilation and electrical systems at MCHS.

• Increasing the efficiency of the high school’s use of utilities by improving windows and insulation.

• Re-doing the bleachers at Eddie Dean field, which is used for football and other sports.

Officials eye costs

Renovation of a building’s mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems would cost approximately $50-$60 per square foot, according to Hal Hart of Crabtree, Rohrbaugh and Associates Architects. This Charlottesville-based consultant developed construction, expansion and renovation possibilities of the complex for the school board earlier this year.

If these systems at both the high school and the middle school were completely renovated it would cost between $7.1-$8.6 million based on these estimates. (The high school is about 64,000 square feet and the middle school is about 79,000 square feet, Supervisor Bob Miller has previously told The Eagle.)

There are also “energy performance” contractors that will calculate the schools current utility bills and how much money the school system would save once certain improvements are done to the building, according to Hart. These types of contractors require no up front “out of pocket” costs, only that officials pay them the amount the school system is “saving” annually over a period that is usually less than 10 years, Hart said.

The consultant also mentioned that it would cost between $300,000-$400,000 to improve the safety of Eddie Dean Field’s bleachers and bring them up to current codes.

Another improvement that school officials had included in some of the long-term improvement options was changes to Mountaineer Lane, a road that runs directly in front of both entrances to the high school and the middle school.

Officials have talked about moving the road farther north from the school building and then constructing a parking lot between the road and the building. In this scenario, bus drop off would possibly move from the back (southern) parking lot to the front of the building.

In order to follow through with these changes, officials would need to revoke the road’s status as a state-maintained roadway. This would enable officials to re-route it away from the building and possibly install fences at the entrances to increase security, Supervisors Chairman Eddie Dean said at the meeting. However, the change would also require school and county officials to pay for the road’s maintenance themselves.

Dean said that he believes the road’s public throughway status should be changed regardless of which future renovation or construction options officials agree on.

Tanner had said that school officials had been looking at that possibility but were interested in determining if the public would support the elimination of that road as a throughway between U.S. 29 and Fairground Road.

Renovation plans questioned

At the meeting, some school board members said they supported pursuing renovation of the entire complex and constructing a new school because they believed it could be a better deal financially to spend the additional money now and go through with the entire project, rather than splitting it up. These notions were related to the consultant’s comments that current construction prices are down and that certain building upgrades are better done together.
“It doesn’t make sense to pull down the ceiling to do work and then years later tear down the ceiling again,” the architectural consultant said at the meeting.

However, the supervisors spoke of the public’s concerns about spending a large sum of money to prepare for future growth, when the school system’s population has remained relatively constant.

“We need to take a realistic approach with the economy the way it is. We don’t want to try to do anything that would get a lot of negative publicity for either one of us,” Dean said, adding later that it could be “a little bit of political suicide for all of us” to pursue a large-scale renovation and construction of a new school.

“We’re probably looking at a 20 cent tax increase to fund that bond issue,” he said.

School Board Vice Chairman Jim Nelson said that the school board never expected that its possible plans to build a new school were going to take place in the near future. Nelson said he believed it was a “media mistake” that gave the public the perception that school officials are planning to build a new school.

“[Our goal] was to peer into the future – not next year or the year after…but for kids that are not even born yet,” he said.

“We’re not saying we need to build a new school, we’ve never said that. We need to look into the future.”

The school board was expected to vote on its draft capital improvement plan at its regularly scheduled Nov. 10 meeting. Watch The Eagle for an upcoming story about this meeting.