WISE — The Wise County Board of Supervisors will reconvene in a recessed session at 5 p.m. Wednesday to discuss the county’s debt management policy in relation to the county school division’s high school consolidation plan.
Supervisors deferred deliberations on the topic from the workshop meeting on Sept. 3 and recessed Thursday’s action session to take up the matter next week.
The school division is pursuing a plan to close the existing six high schools and build three new facilities at a projected maximum cost of $100 million.
The consolidation program would merge St. Paul and Coeburn high schools in one of the new high schools proposed to be built west of Coeburn next to U.S. Route 58-A near the community of Tacoma. J.J. Kelly High School in Wise would merge with Pound High School into a new facility at a site off U.S. Route 23 near Wise. And Powell Valley High School in Big Stone Gap would merge with Appalachia High School in a new school proposed to be built directly behind the existing Powell Valley High School.
Wise County School Superintendent Jeff Perry has said the $100 million total cost projection is likely on the high end, but based on that figure an annual debt payment to the county for the three new schools would be around $7.9 million.
According to the school division’s projections, 20-year debt service to build one new school on a cost projection of $33 million would be $2.6 million annually and $5.2 million annually for two new schools based on a combined total cost projection of $66 million.
The school division, based on information supplied by the county administrator’s office, has also projected the total annual debt service the county can handle without raising taxes is $70 million. By going to three high schools instead of six, the school division has projected a total annual operational cost savings of $3.1 million and an additional $1.4 million in non-instructional costs, savings that can be applied to annual debt service for the consolidation program.
Perry has said annual costs associated with operating six high schools is fiscally unsustainable. An enrollment loss from a total 6,698 students in 2003 to 6,537 in 2008 — reflecting a much longer-term decline since the 1960s — translates into a reduction in state and federal funding over the five-year period. Meanwhile, Perry said operational costs continue to rise, from $57 million in 2003 to $75 million in 2008, an $18 million increase.
Declining enrollment and revenues coupled with ever-escalating costs means the county will consolidate in an orderly fashion now, Perry said, or sooner rather than later be forced to close the smallest high schools anyway, with those students sent to the existing larger high schools in Big Stone Gap, Wise and Coeburn.