After six months of what Superintendent Steven Constantino called “chicken-or-the-egg conversations,” the WJCC School Board is back to searching for a preferred site to build a fourth middle school and deciding if a new administration building should be part of the recommendation.
School Board members discussed what they wanted to present to local governments in an upcoming joint meeting with the City of Williamsburg and James City County on their need for a new middle school Saturday at WJCC’s budget retreat.
Overcrowded middle schools and growing enrollment numbers led the school board to start planning a fourth middle school to accommodate more students. In September, Constantino recommended demolishing the James Blair building on Ironbound Road — where the administration’s central office is housed — to make way for a new $40 million middle school.
If the James Blair site were to be used for a new middle school, the central office would need to move. That prompted a recommendation for a new $8 million central office at a different and undetermined location.
Subsequent administrative conversations rebutted the decision on the grounds the new school should be put in a geographic location that best reflects where future population will grow. To that end, WJCC in October asked city and county planners to provide them with 10-year population projections.
Yet another problem emerged: that information did not yet exist. Planners went to work drawing maps to show population projections for the next 10 years.
Fast forward almost four months. It is now budget time and the school board is waiting on the maps, but wants to walk in a future joint meeting with localities with a clear plan on where to build the new school. The board cannot make a clear recommendation without the maps.
James City County is also working to develop its budget and is trying to leave room for WJCC to come in with a funding request for the fourth middle school, but is unsure how much money it needs to set aside or how much may need to be financed. The county currently stands in a position where it may be unable to acquire the amount of debt needed to fund a fourth middle school, if the cost is roughly $40 million for construction alone, and maintain its AAA bond rating.
“We’ve shaken the sofa cushions a heck of a lot and there’s not a lot there,” said Supervisor Jim Kennedy (Stonehouse) at the James City County Board of Supervisors’ Saturday budget retreat. “I don’t know that we can rub two nickels together anymore and come up with a quarter.”
At the school board’s Saturday meeting, Vice Chairman Jim Kelly said the board should stick to the James Blair building site recommendation since school administration took time to form a community-representative task force. He said he did not necessarily think it was the only viable site for the school, but instead would just be better to walk into the joint meeting with a plan than to have no plan at all.
Both Constantino and Chairwoman Ruth Larson countered that things had changed since the board discussed demolishing James Blair: There are new county supervisors in office and information is about to be released about population growth projections.
At the James City County board retreat Saturday, county staff told the Board of Supervisors school enrollment numbers are also showing a need for a new elementary school — in the west end of the county — and a new high school within the next several years. Looking at a potential need for a new school at each level, Supervisor Michael Hipple (Powhatan), elected to the board in November — said he would like to see a future school site house multiple schools.
Kelly and Board Member Joe Fuentes agreed the school board needed to go into the joint meeting with a fact-based recommendation and, as the facts now stood, they could not do that.
“You don’t have a plan that works,” Kelly said.
Kelly was partly talking about costs associated with the fourth middle school on the preliminary Capital Improvement Plan, a document presented Saturday that shows possible costs of future construction projects. The CIP showed $4.3 million for the fiscal year 2015 budget allotted to design the school and $35.9 million for the construction in the fiscal year 2016 budget. The document did not include the cost for buying land for a fourth middle school, which would be needed if the school was not built on the James Blair site.
Constantino responded to the comment later, saying he and his staff had simply been following the direction of the school board while vetting options for the fourth middle school. School Board Member Elise Emanuel said the confusion over the project is indicative of a need to expressly have a joint conversation with the city and county.
“We need to have that meeting,” Emanuel said.
The board eventually agreed to wait for the population projection maps to be released before revising the plan they will present to the county and city. The maps are expected to be released within the next two weeks.
Brittany Voll contributed reporting for this article.
