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New Wise County high schools projected to cost $91 million to $100 million - Kingsport Times-News Online
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New Wise County high schools projected to cost $91 million to $100 million - Kingsport Times-News Online
New Wise County high schools projected to cost $91 million to $100 million
By Steve Igo
Published April 6th, 2009
WISE ? The Wise County school division projects a total cost for three new high schools to be between $91 million and $100 million ? close to previous cost projections to consolidate the existing six aging schools into three modern facilities.
School Superintendent Jeff Perry presented an overview of the Wise County School Board?s ongoing plans to achieve consolidation during Monday?s action session. The school board may present a consolidation plan to the Board of Supervisors this summer for finance strategy approval.
Perry said cost estimates include $18 million to build each facility and an estimated $5.6 million for site costs. He said the five sites currently under consideration range from a low of $4 million to $11 million for site acquisition and preparation costs, indicating one or more of those five sites may be undesirable at least from a cost perspective.
The $18 million facilities ? to be built with the same design to save costs ? would include 14,000-square-foot gyms and 14,600-square-foot auditoriums. Gyms and auditoriums are pricey, Perry said, with auditoriums adding $3 million to each new school alone. The new facilities would also include 6,000 square feet devoted to fine arts programs.
As projected in previous studies, the school division could expect to save a conservative $3.24 million in annual operations costs by halving the number of high schools it operates, savings expected to be applied to annual debt service to build the new facilities.
The information will be a central part of community forums to begin in about a week. Information on each of the current schools will be included. For example, 30 years ago enrollment at J.J. Kelly High School in Wise was 692 ? or pretty much the anticipated enrollment at a combined J.J. Kelly and Pound student bodies in a new school ? compared to J.J. Kelly?s current enrollment of 472, a 32 percent decline in three decades. J.J. Kelly was built in 1953.
Consolidation foes who advocate renovating all six schools also received statistical data not to their liking, such as the substantial cost projections associated with renovations running the gamut from $52 million for the status quo to $108 million, and no operational savings.
The school division also lays out the declining enrollment trend, instructional disruption by embarking on a years-long renovation program, lack of sustainable design, inequities in curriculum long rampant in the current six-school setup, small classroom sizes that impact academic programming negatively, operational costs per child, and overall program limitations including extracurricular.
Of the many potential benefits to the school division and its students, Perry included expanded curriculum and other academic opportunities at consolidated schools, a high skill set of teachers at each of the new schools, and expanded extracurricular activities and programs.
Perry said the new schools will be built for the future, not the past.
?We will build our schools for programming,? he said, ?rather than program schools that were built 50 years ago.?
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