Wise superintendent presents consolidation plan to supervisors

WISE — Wise County confronting consolidation of its high schools is inevitable, School Superintendent Jeff Perry told the Board of Supervisors on Thursday. It’s just a matter of when and how.

Perry presented the Wise County School Board’s now-and-how $100 million plan to supervisors on Thursday. The other consolidation option, he said, is a failure to plan that will result in a forced, inflexible and difficult consolidation sooner rather than later.

The school board wants to close the existing six high schools and build three modern facilities to merge the student populations of Appalachia with Powell Valley in Big Stone Gap, Pound with J.J. Kelly in Wise, and St. Paul with Coeburn. Sites for the new schools chosen by the school board are behind the existing Powell Valley High School, near Wise and west of Coeburn.

Perry laid out an array of numbers and reasoning behind the school board’s planned consolidation, including potential loss of $3 million or more in state funds within the next budget cycle, ever-declining enrollment, 75 percent of the annual budget committed to wages and benefits, total school operational costs that have increased $18 million over five years from $57 million in 2003 to $75 million last year, and few options to trim costs or raise revenues.

If the $3 million state cut hits as expected, Perry said the options are to make work force reductions, close schools or cut programs. He said the smallest high schools face closure anyway, and without the consolidation plan now before supervisors, their students would attend the old larger schools regardless.

“It’s not a threat,” Perry said, but merely facing the cold, hard facts about consolidation.

Some supervisors disputed Perry’s facts, such as Ronnie Shortt of Pound. Shortt expressed skepticism the three new schools could be built for $100 million and even the $70 million Perry said the county could afford to borrow without raising taxes, even though Perry got the $70 million figure from the supervisors’ own administrative office.

The plan submitted Thursday by Perry recommends requesting proposals from contractors this month, receiving the first round of RFPs and preliminary engineering reports in September, selecting the leading proposals in October, then receiving the second round of proposals in mid-November with detailed plans, including specific costs.

The school division’s consolidation plan would award bids in December, review final designs in February 2010, and begin construction that month or March, with the new schools completed by July and ready for their first students in time for the opening day of school in 2012.

By consolidating six high schools into three new ones, the school division projects an annual operational savings of over $3.24 million that can be applied to debt service. Each new school is projected to cost about $33 million. A 20-year $33 million loan carries an annual debt service of $2.6 million, a $66 million debt would be paid back at $5.2 million a year, and a $100 million commitment would require an annual debt service of $7.9 million, Perry said.

The costs may be eased somewhat by the possibility of snaring some zero-interest federal stimulus bonds, Perry said, and pursuing other grants that contractors have been pointing out to the school division in recent months.

A construction market that has driven costs down from $200 per square foot to $150, if not better, also makes this the time to strike to save costs, he said.

The average enrollment in a Virginia high school is 1,187 students, Perry said. Even with consolidation, the three new schools would be home to fewer than 700 students at two of them and just over 500 students at another.

Perry said the time has come for Wise County to make a difficult decision because there is a need for immediate action and a need to move forward. The county made that decision in the 1950s when it consolidated nine high schools into the existing six schools “and now the mantle of responsibility (to consolidate into even fewer schools) has been laid on our shoulders,” Perry said.

Perry said there is a need to develop a vision and a future for the county to “do what is best for Wise County.”

Skepticism expressed by supervisors over the cost projections was shared by Shortt, Board Chairman Robby Robbins and Big Stone Gap’s Virginia Meador, but Perry said he didn’t pull them out of thin air.

“We have done the homework on this,” he said. “I feel very comfortable about this.”


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