Wednesday, Jul. 14, 2010

$59M surplus may fund two elementary schools

Wake County school board members will have to decide whether the best way to spend $59 million in school construction savings is on building two new elementary schools.

School administrators have recommended using the $59 million to build two new elementary schools that could open in 2013. Administrators have identified three sites: U.S. 1 in Wake Forest near the Franklin County border, the closed North Wake Landfill in North Raleigh and at the intersection of Scotts Ridge Trail and Apex Barbecue Road in Apex.

If the Apex and North Raleigh sites are chosen, it also could give a boost to efforts to build planned municipal parks by the schools.

Administrators have asked the board to discuss the proposal Tuesday. County commissioners also will have to approve how the $59 million will be used.

"We've got the money, and we're dealing with potential crowding," said Joe Desormeaux, the school system's assistant superintendent for facilities.

Desormeaux said the $59 million was accumulated from projects coming in under budget from the district's ongoing $1.056 billion construction program. Although the national recession has delayed some projects, the school system has completed most of the work funded by a record $970 million school construction bond issue approved by voters in 2006.

Despite budget cuts resulting in layoffs and some classes being eliminated, the construction savings can only be used for other capital projects such as building and renovating schools and purchasing land for new schools.

Desormeaux said staff looked at where crowding was the greatest and where the school system could quickly begin construction. At a cost of $25 million per elementary school, the savings covered the cost of two schools.

In the section of the county that includes the Wake Forest and North Raleigh sites, elementary schools are projected to be at 110.7 percent of capacity in 2013. In the area that includes the Apex site, elementary schools are projected to be at 105.6 percent in 2013.

Both the Apex and North Raleigh sites have been envisioned as joint school and municipal park space.

The Apex site, already named Scotts Ridge Elementary by the school board, was purchased in 2007 with the town in mind. Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly said the town has $2 million set aside to buy up to 15 acres of the property for park space once the school gets the go ahead.

"When growth picks back up, we'll certainly need another new school in western Wake," Weatherly said.

There's been talk for much of the past decade about building both an elementary school and a City of Raleigh park at the site of the North Wake Landfill at Durant Road, which closed in 2008.

The Wake Forest site, located at 13700 Capital Blvd., had once been considered for a public-private partnership in which a developer would have constructed the school and leased it back to the school system. The pilot project died, and the school was put on hold.

Although staff is recommending building two elementary schools, Desormeaux said the board could go another way. The board could tell staff to build on other elementary school sites owned by Wake, build one elementary school and use the remaining $34 million on something else, such as land acquisition and renovations to existing schools, or use the money to build one middle school, costing around $50 million. But Desormeaux said crowding in middle schools wasn't as much of a concern as at elementary schools.

Like the staff, the school board's facilities committee isn't recommending which two elementary schools to build.

But board member Chris Malone, chairman of the facilities committee, is lobbying for the Wake Forest site, which is in his district, and Scotts Ridge Elementary.

"There are schools in that area that don't have a full load," Malone said of the area near the North Wake Landfill. "We can use the new schools more elsewhere."

School board member Kevin Hill, whose district includes the North Wake Landfill site, said he'll press administrators to recommend which two sites to go with rather than leave it solely up to the school board.

"This is what we're supposed to rely on staff for," Hill said.