The Montgomery County School Board met in a special work session with the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors Monday night to determine a long-term solution to a long-term problem.
The two boards, chaired by school board chairman Wendell Jones and board of supervisors chairwoman Annette Perkins, struggled to communicate concerns over safety of school buildings and tax increases while attempting to come to a consensus on a plan for the construction and repair of Blacksburg and Auburn schools.
Since the gymnasium of Blacksburg High School collapsed on Feb. 13, the school board has worked to find functional solutions to the plethora of problems the loss of a 1,200-student school has brought the county.
However, in the county’s 2006 capital plan, both Auburn High School and Auburn Middle School were identified as critical capital projects in need of repair.
Montgomery County students started school Monday, with Blacksburg High School students attending school at Blacksburg Middle School, Blacksburg Middle School students attending school at the previously unused Old Christiansburg Middle School and Auburn Middle and High School students attending schools in buildings that were constructed in the 1930s. Current solutions have all been classified as temporary.
The two boards considered five possible solutions, ranging from repairing BHS for $14.5 million and addressing Auburn’s needs at a later time to simultaneously building a new BHS, a new AHS and renovating the current AHS to become a new AMS for $124.6 million.
After the three-hour work session, no decision was made and no votes were taken. Instead, individual members presented concerns to one another and a handful of citizen observers who gathered in the auditorium of Christiansburg Middle School.
“We sure spent almost three hours, talking,” Perkins said to end the meeting. “I just want to end things here, we were not to come to any conclusion tonight and we were not to come to any decision. ... I truly leave here with a heavy heart.”
BUILDING CONCERNS
“We must have a long-term solution for Blacksburg High Schools students,” said Brenda Blackburn, schools superintendent, in her opening statement.
Discussion centered on whether the current BHS building could be repaired to safe standards.
Some members of both boards opposed repairing BHS.
“I need to feel, personally, that when someone says it’s safe it’s safe,” said Mary Biggs, a board of supervisors member.
Though some board members were in favor of repairing BHS to save taxpayers from the burden of potentially more than $100 million, others remained strongly opposed to what they saw as a quick fix to Blacksburg’s current problems.
“I don’t believe we fully understand the scope of the repair, and I don’t think we fully recognize the cost. It’s not going to be $14 million,” said Jones, the school board chairman.
Other board members disputed the concerns over the stability of BHS.
“You can’t go anywhere that the land in this county doesn’t have rocks and holes and caverns and it’s just part of where we live,” said Gary Creed, a board of supervisors member. “You’re probably going to have some cracks, it’s typical.”
TAX CONCERNS
However, many members, mainly of the board of supervisors, have reservations about the potential property tax hike to 17 cents per $100. Additionally, if the county borrows enough for the most expensive plan, it would likely not be able to borrow again for many years.
“Think about it,” said John Muffo, a board of supervisors member, “we won’t be able to issue debt again for another eight to 10 years. Eight to 10 years.”
Board of supervisors member Bill Brown expressed concerns over the less financially stable citizens of his district.
“There’s 80,000 people that are going to pay for the renovation for these two schools, and some of these people are afraid of losing their homes,” Brown said. “Anything higher than two cents, they don’t know where they would go.”
School board member Wat Hopkins, also a communication professor at Virginia Tech, pushed the two boards to work together and find parallel solutions to both the building and tax problems.
“It’s up to the school board to find out if (BHS is) safe,” he said. “It’s the task of the board of supervisors to deal with creative means for funding.”
The two boards left the work session with more questions and frustrations than answers or agreements.
The two boards expressed interest in holding another joint session, but no meeting is currently scheduled.