What Wise Co. Schools Need

A five-year capital projects plan includes costly upgrades to five of Wise County's six high schools, and those proposals precede forthcoming deliberations by the school board about even costlier and more extensive renovations to the aging facilities.

During Monday's school board workshop session at Coeburn Middle School, school administrators presented a five-year plan to address the highest-priority maintenance items at all county schools, with electrical and plumbing upgrades at Appalachia, Coeburn, J.J. Kelly, Pound and Powell Valley high schools tabbed by School Superintendent Gregory Killough as must-do items regardless of future high school renovation discussions.

Killough said spreading the plumbing/electrical work over the five-year period could be incorporated into future extensive renovation plans for those facilities, but otherwise urged the board to adopt a five-year plan to address priority needs at the high schools.

The five-year plan includes estimated annual maintenance/upgrade costs ranging from a high of more than $2.5 million to a low of $1.7 million over the period. For the upcoming school year, the plan includes a projected $435,500 for plumbing upgrades to Appalachia High School, followed by $375,000 to overhaul the plumbing at Coeburn High School in 2007-08, $504,000 at J.J. Kelly in 2008-09, $378,000 at Pound in 2009-10, and $431,700 at Powell Valley in 2010-11.

Electrical service and distribution upgrades are projected at around $1.05 million at Appalachia next school year, nearly $840,000 at Coeburn in 2007-08, $1.17 million at J.J. Kelly in 2008-09, $757,000 at Pound in 2009-10, and $844,000 at Powell Valley in 2010-11.

Appalachia and Powell Valley are also slated to get new kitchen floors next school year at $22,600 and $28,300, respectively, and Appalachia to receive $414,000 worth of roofing improvements in 2007-08. Upgrades to heating systems at Powell Valley and Appalachia are projected to be $75,000 at the latter in 2009-10 and $85,000 at Powell Valley in 2010-11. Annual asbestos removal at the high schools of $60,000 are included for each year of the plan.

In other matters, the administration floated a proposed 3 percent salary increase for all employees for the next school year that would require an additional $1.08 million in next year's budget, as well as nearly $360,000 more for increased health insurance costs. The total payroll increase includes a step increase for teachers to make their total increase closer to 4.5 percent, Killough said.

The budget is currently being drafted, and a public hearing is scheduled for 6:10 p.m. on April 24 at the Education Center.

The board also discussed once again two projects at Coeburn Middle and Powell Valley Primary schools, mainly how to salvage a 500-seating capacity in the new gymnasiums. Initial cost estimates for the two projects, which include additional classrooms and other spaces, brought the total estimated cost to better than $10 million. But last month Wise County Administrator Glenn "Skip" Skinner told the school board that the Board of Supervisors was unfavorably disposed to that price tag due to expected costly renovations to the high schools. Skinner said supervisors might be more amenable to a $6 million total cost for both projects.

The school board had the two architectural firms present scaled-back versions of the projects, bringing the total cost estimates down to around $7.5 million. Excluded from the projects were some classroom and other spaces as well as 250-seat capacity gyms.

On Monday, school board members dickered on ways to regain the 250 seats at each of the proposed new gyms without adding to cost projections, or at least not by much, something an architectural representative advised would be difficult to achieve given baseline square footage costs.

Board member Cecilia Robinette said original cost estimates based on 500-seat gyms were only 9 percent of the total projected price tag anyway, and the communities would be better served by building facilities adequate to the needs of the future.

[pvhoo]

I realize that consolidation is a touchy issue, but to keep six very small high schools open in a county of 40,000 people is absurd. Many of those buildings are in shambles, but we are going to pay for complete renovation of every high school in order to avoid telling the public what it doesnt want to hear. This money could be used to pay for curriculum improvement or faculty expansion. The prior is a major concern of mine, because we graduate too many people who haven't attained an acceptable level of competency in the subjects of literature, grammar, or math. High schools dont have the resources to provide a decent pre-college curriculum, and swva students often enter college a year behind their counterparts from more populated areas. The SOL's are a complete and utter joke, because they cater to the lowest common denominator instead of raising it.

SWVA will continue to lag behind the rest of Virginia economically until we decide that a serious change needs to happen with our education system.

[SWVA-Football]

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SOL's are a complete and utter joke, because they cater to the lowest common denominator instead of raising it.

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Agreed... the SOL tests are - just like you said - a joke.

Until our jobs cease to have 20 year cycles that everybody "gets on in the mines" and right now we have another boom, an experienced miner makes 17-20 bucks an hour, there is no reason for an industry to come here and risk a mining cycle wrecking the apple cart. Education or not , the roads and workforce still aren't here, and the next issue is - overseas. If they can teach it to a "[censored]" they can teach it to someone who will work cheaper, and not the first person in office in my 46 years has ever said, " We need to tax the junk that is imported to cover the losses in tax dollars." At least that wouldn't increase the burder on the rest that were working. They bust our butt with environmental laws, but haul in stuff that is much cheaper because the countries that make it DON'T care what they dump. Why locate here when you can go to a country that doesn't have SS or medical care or any extra costs? At least the USA should think that much of it's own people. At one point auto making jobs were lost to Mexico , because the pollution was too a great cost to remove from the US waste. The parts were made almost within sight of the US border, and shipped right back north.

[pvhoo]

In a post industrialized society, education becomes more crucial, because your workforce cannot rely jobs in the unskilled labor market to make a decent living. Outsourcing sucks, but it is here to stay. Employers arent moving, because they are trying to betray the United States. They move out of necessity. Firms have to make rational decisions, and many will go out of business if they remain in the US. Human and capital inputs are far more expensive in the United States, and the shelf prices reflect the inputs. We either cry about globalization and lose our status as an economic superpower, or we educate our workforce in order to increase innovation. The bottom line it that we simply must create technology that other countries dont have. That's how you will keep americans employed in the future.

Import tariffs dont get the job done. Fact is, we need their manufactored goods, because we dont have the capacity to produce them here. If we raise tariffs, then you decrease the rate of consumption. This is similar to what Hoover did in the great depression. In the face of a falling stock market, he raised import taxes in order to accumulate financial capital for the government as a means to build consumer confidence. His increased taxes hindered the foreign market's ability to bring us out of the depression by further decreasing consumption in the US.

When you raise tariffs, then you lower consumption, a two edged sword. They just arent an option, because they prove to be too much of a burden on the american consumer.

Education enables people to earn a better living. If we earn a better living, then we generate more tax revenue. We generate more taxes, then we build better roads and infrustructure.

One of America's essential problems is that we have become too lazy. Why work and contribute when you can make a living off the government? Many Americans feel that they are entitled to a good living simply because they are Americans. France is in terrible economic shape because of their socialized employment structure. The french government is notorious for simply handing out government suppliments, and it will hurt us too. America must quit rewarding laziness. Capitalism is an efficient system. It rewards those who are aggressive and hardworking, and it punishes those who do nothing. People must pay for what they do and dont do.

As to your first idea, every industry endures boom and bust cycles. I am convinced that labor unions must be more responsible with their power. They are responsible, to some extent, for driving away much of swva's coal industry. Additionally, it probably becomes more mechanized the deeper you go, so I doubt that it is financially expedient to maintain large crews of miners when machines can do the job just as well.

I think there's an inherent difference between factory production and mining in the sense that there is only output from mining. Coal is not a renewable resource, hence the business dies when the seams are gone. Factories are more stable because there are consistent exterior inputs.

sorry for the rant

And your experience in any organized labor force would be? Or in a factory?

If we keep sending jobs and cash out of the country we are selling our soul. If that is ok with everyone, I guess it is ok with me. Try tracing down what happened to our steel industry, why the money that was made by the union workers was stripped from the pension funds and spent on an oil company. The amount the county owed doubled in one 5 year span - the last 5 years of the Reagan era . If we don't make a better effort to find some way to employ people, we are soon going to find that even if the jobs and money are in China, the folks and social problems are still here. I hear a lot of talk of " education" but still don't see that many good jobs no matter where you go. The people that have made this country what it is are the Folks that get up and go to a job that they don't really love, but make enough to feed the family, send the kids to school on. Buy a house and a car, middle class. How often do you hear of a factory of any size opening anywhere? Looks to me like the country is getting pretty thin....we contarct a lot of even our defense work... WWII was won on the coal, steel and auto industry supplying the troops. The Government has stood by and let a lot of the tech be stolen, I can hunt the cases if you'd like, The Japanese had a steel tha made with Russian company to steal a milling machine, for farming. It was claimed to be needed anyway, complex machine, set the Russians up a whole generations in noise in milling submarine propellers. Hacked up the guidance for the heads on the thing made plows the way I understand, seems it made other curved surfaces too. Free enterprise works as long as everyone use the rules, but if I have to pay to clean the water, and for everyone's health care(and we all know everybody went to the doctor on the coal companies) then the guy from China is probably gonna be cheaper. The bottom line still comes to this- WE are the USA, we have so many people to take care FIRST, and if we don't figure out how to MATCH some of these folks and these job skill levels, they will HAVE to have a social system able to feed , keep'em up and provide health care- all with out their having a job. Cause all of them were out-sourced, and do you thing the 1% of the population that control 99% of the wealth is gonna raise their taxes to pay for them? It might be time to start to worry about middle class jobs. I don't want to make all too easy, but to give people that want to work a chance to, to figure a way so that Americans can feed the family and keep the Country strong and enough of an industrial base to be able to take care of ourselves, I think is reasonable.

[pvhoo]

We agree that outsourcing is bad. In a capitalist society, the government cannot intervene to prevent this outsourcing. Our society needs to place a bigger emphasis on education so that people will have the skills to make a living in an evolving job market. I dont want people to lost their jobs but I'm being pragmatic and so are business firms. In a couple years GM will no longer be the biggest auto manufacturer. They were spending an average of 130k a year to compensate their employees through salary, retirement, insurance, etc. GM was so desperate to reconcile this budget disparity that they are paying thousands of employes 100k in severance compensation in order to save money in the long term. Businesses cannot afford to do this. They will go bankrupt if they pay such high salaries.

Second, innovation is another byproduct of an educated society. We need more engineers to build technology that keeps us competitive in the world market, because it allows us to create products that nobody else can(and by extension, jobs). As of now eastern Asia is producing roughly 4 engineers for every 1 that we produce. This must change or else we will lose the edge in technology.

Americans need to understand that they live in an evolving world. Protectionist policies will only serve to hinder our ability to compete in the world market. You ask for a solution? I propose that education and innovation are essential for economic growth in a post industrialized world. We are very wealthy, and will only maintain this wealth by endowing our young people with practical knowledge. If our young people dont receive a good foundation at the elementary and secondary levels, then they wont compete successfully in college. Hence, why I propose consolidation as a way to pool resources and information. Our region is very conservative and doesnt respond well to change, but that is a byproduct of our failure to challenge ourselves intellectually. Knowledge is power. The rest of the world else seems to understand this precept, but why dont Americans get it?

You are talking about robbing the middle class, they can afford to take some cuts. However the stuff you are repeating about the world markets is big business talking , why be an engineer when there is no job for you? GM is among many that cutting health care benefits, watch what I am telling you. GM made money hand over fist for years and where do you think it went? Not into the pension funds. As far as consolidation, do it right , lay out a fair plan, with new schools , not inside any town , so we don't have to pay large amounts for the land and you won't find folks so much against it. Try to keep lying to Wise Co like the last board and keep a couple of pet schools , you will have the same fight. You should use the colleges as much as you can, stick to the core classes in high school, after all we have 2 colleges in the county and you have said this is what we are aiming for. They teach many things, perhaps some of the high school classes could be moved to the colleges, cutting the need for new buildings even more and adding flexiblity to the plans. Gee that would be a good idea and save the tax payers a buck the easy way. [img]/LDPforum/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] I only want a little help with the countries that don't play "fair" as far as the outsourcing. It is our own companies that have made so much here that bother me. [img]/LDPforum/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] US Steel made the choice not to upgrade their mills and to buy into the oil biz, it will leave their pensioners "orphans" at some point, but the folks that run the company will make plenty. If the government and courts don't help the people that work their life away for a company, why should anyone work? Foodstamps, welfare, run up a bill at the hospital and file bankruptcy. It is part of the company planning today.

[pvhoo]

A couple points....

First, my argument is not one favoring big business over the plight of the middle class working family. It is an argument based on economics. Businesses dont want to export their facilities across the ocean, but it is a necessity to prevent them from declaring bankruptsy. Businesses are governed by rational self interest, and they must do what is necessary in order to remain in operation. On this point I am not arguing,but am merely stating a fact. Businesses export jobs out of necessity, and there is nothing that we can do to stop them. I suggest that our society should focus on producing knowledgable, well-educated citizens who are capable of producing innovation, technology, and jobs. The bottom line is that we must evolve. I dont like it, but it is a grim reality.

Second, You pose the question, "why be an engineer when there is no job for you?" Engineers will always have jobs, because their services to our society are invaluable (that is not the point). Engineers are essential for producing innovation and technology. Innovation and technology lead to a rise in industry and job production. When you have engineers, then you are able to produce technology that other countries cant, and bingo, you have a comparative advantage in that market. Why do we need engineers? Because engineers create jobs!

pvhoo