When James City County rolled out its proposed budget for next year, placeholder funds were included for a fourth Williamsburg-James City County middle school with a few stipulations that have to be met.
The WJCC School Board is gearing up for a meeting with the James City County Board of Supervisors on April 30 to discuss the schools’ budget and the proposed county budget; a joint meeting between the schools and Williamsburg City Council already took place in March.
The proposed James City County budget provides $7.5 million for the schools’ CIP, including $4.5 million for the fourth middle school in 2015. A placeholder of $24 million for a 650-student middle school was included in the county’s CIP for 2016. The City of Williamsburg included $801,451 for the schools’ CIP in its budget, which would provide the schools about $8.3 million when coupled with James City’s contribution.
The school board in March voted to approve a preliminary budget with a placeholder for a 950-student middle school and new central office, with its total fiscal year 2015 capital improvements program – the part of the budget covering high-dollar projects – capping out at about $24 million. Funding for the fourth middle school was spread over two years, with $4.3 million requested in 2015 and about $36 million in 2016.
“I think that was done because … we thought the most fiscally responsible thing to do was go ahead and build a school that had the capability of housing that number of students,” said School Board Chairwoman Ruth Larson.
James City’s budget states funding for a new school will not be handed over until alternate sites to James Blair are studied, and the possibility of locating a middle school on the James Blair site without tearing down the existing building is explored.
To delve into these two questions, Assistant County Administrator Doug Powell is pulling together a group of representatives from James City, Williamsburg and the schools within the next several days. Supervisor Mike Hipple (Powhatan) proposed looking at an available site on Jolly Pond Road for a new school at a March meeting, and Powell said additional sites have come available since then that could be used.
Larson was not aware Powell was working on putting a committee together, but she welcomed the help.
“That’s good news for us. Either way, we just need a place to put a middle school,” Larson said. “Of course the county has to be the driver on purchasing land. The school division is not able to do that.”
As far as the James Blair site is concerned, Larson does not think a school and a central office would fit there, but she does think it would be a great idea to have the central office and middle school built on the same site.
“That site is a pretty tight spot as it is. It’s an excellent location … it’s kind of central in the community,” Larson said. “We can only propose something with what we know. And right now what we know is we have this one piece of property and that’s the James Blair site, so if things come back to us that there is another piece of property, that there can be two buildings on the James Blair site versus one. Then we can begin to make further recommendations.”
Two of the items not funded in James City’s proposed CIP are new school buses and classroom technology refreshments, which Powell said should be included in the schools’ operating budget rather than its CIP.
“The classroom technology replacements include a multitude of relatively small-dollar items with useful lives of between [three] and [five] years,” reads the proposed county budget.
School buses are one of the main items Larson wants to see funded.
“That is something for safety. We’ve got buses that are aging that we need to replace,” Larson said. “We have to get some funding for those buses.”
Larson said she hopes the funding for school buses comes up during conversations between the two boards April 30. While the county CIP did not fund every school request, it did include funding for a new roof for Jamestown High School as well as a school-wide refurbishment project.
Every 10 years WJCC schools are up for refurbishment to prevent long-term, high-dollar repairs from occurring in one fell swoop, which can sometimes land students in learning cottages – trailers – for a school year while repairs are done.
In the York County School Division a school-wide refurbishment project was executed during the 2005-06 school year, so all students took classes in trailers on the school’s front lawn during repairs. The following year, a school-wide refurbishment project took place at Yorktown Middle School.
“The refurbishment schedule we have kept our schools on, I think has really paid off in dividends,” Larson said. “I feel fortunate we have been able to keep our refurbishment cycle going. … That Jamestown High refurbishment, I’m glad that was kept in the CIP.”
Jamestown High was built in 1997 and is slightly behind schedule on its refurbishment, but work begins this summer and can be completed if the county’s proposed budget is passed.
Related Coverage:
- WJCC School Board OKs Preliminary Budget with Placeholders for Middle School, Central Office
- JCC Supes to Wait Two Weeks Before Offering Opinion on Fourth Middle School, Central Office
- WJCC Superintendent’s Proposed Budget Gives Raise to Employees, Hires 16 Teachers
- WJCC Identifies New Buses, Alternative Program Overhaul as Budget Priorities in 2014-15
