School Board Makes A Few Changes to CIP
May 9, 2006--At its Committee of the Whole meeting today, the Board of Education made a couple of additions to the draft capital improvement plan after staff decided to pull the two regional bus transportation centers. The revised plan’s bottom line total remained at $997 million and will come up for a final vote May 16.
School board members decided to add funding for bus parking, as well as a portion of Enloe High School’s major renovation project and a major renovation project at Smith Elementary School to the draft plan. Both projects would address health and safety issues.
Staff decided to pull the two regional centers from the draft plan and instead recommended funding land for bus parking while studying ways to gain maximum savings from the regional centers in the future. They said it was important to get bus parking off school sites. The biggest savings will come in travel time, and having a remote facility versus having to drive to the service center at Rock Quarry Road.
The school board also continued its discussion of year-round designations. Chuck Dulaney, assistant superintendent for Growth and Planning, said that o ver the next 20 years, the elementary school population is expected to double. The use of the multi-track year-round calendar could reduce the number of new elementary schools needed over the next 20 years by 25, saving the county almost one billion dollars.
“By choosing the multi-track year-round calendar for elementary schools as your default, you’re freeing up a huge amount of money that can be used for other purposes,” Dulaney told the board. “This is a basic strategy for meeting our enrollment over the next 20 years – not just in 2007-08.”
Several board members questioned whether the remaining 20 or so traditional elementary schools would be located across the county in an equitable fashion for families. Dulaney indicated that his staff will work to try and provide alternative traditional calendar schools for all of the county's planning regions when they bring a draft of a detailed plan to the Board later this summer.