Faced with a pressing need to build more schools for a burgeoning population, Guilford County School officials are planning to make it easier for minority subcontractors to participate in the construction boom.

Businesses owned by minorities and women would have to gain certification as a Minority or Women or Socially and Economically Disadvantaged Business Enterprise to qualify for school contracts. But the majority of the burden to achieve diversity through “good faith efforts” falls on general contractors.

At a recent meeting, the board of education appeared dedicated to the cause.

Contractors have expressed concerns about the plan, school board Chairman Alan Duncan said. But, he said, he thinks all parties will be satisfied with the outcome.

“Finding the balance that makes things work for all our contractors is the key,” Duncan said.

“If it’s ever going to be any different, we have to take steps that will create a paradigm change,” board member Dot Kearns said.

But board members Deena Hayes and Amos Quick were more adamant, and asked system CFO Sharon Ozment hard questions during her presentation.

“We are severely lacking in this, and it’s frustrating,” Quick said. “We can be innovators and changers. There are internal things we have to do.”

Hayes challenged Ozment’s understanding of the problem.

“Do you and your staff have an understanding of how we got here? If you don’t know how we got here, I’m not sure we can move forward,” Hayes said.

The strategic plan, authored by Raleigh-based consultant Kenneth Johnson, is intended to enhance GCS’ good-faith effort goals when awarding school construction bids. A major step toward that goal is requiring contractors to submit documentation of the good-faith efforts with their bids. Now, contractors can provide the paperwork 72 hours after submitting bids.

That’s a problem, Johnson said, because general contractors are focused on being the low bidder. Once they get the bid, they’ll shop around to find the cheapest subcontractor.

To discourage bid shopping, Johnson recommended that general contractors submit all subcontractor bids, just not those from minorities.

“You’re looking for a pattern to see if minorities are getting the same breaks as other contractors,” Johnson said.

But the plan involves more than just submitting paperwork. It suggests, among other things, that contractors help minority contractors by purchasing supplies and materials, making plans, specifications and requirements available for review, and assisting in getting required bonding and insurance or providing alternatives to such bonding and insurance.

While the Small Business Administration helps provide bonding for small businesses, Johnson asserts that many big contractors don’t want them to get bonding, citing a “good old boy” network.

Ozment acknowledged that securing bonding for small companies is a concern for the school system.

“That’s been an obstacle, and I’m concerned about it,” Ozment said. “We don’t want to eliminate bonding — for obvious reasons.”

Those “obvious reasons” recently hit home with the Guilford County System when structural flaws were found at three middle schools earlier in the year, for which the school system will have to spend at least $9 million to fix. Guilford Schools has filed one lawsuit in the matter, against Winston-Salem-based Lyon Construction, which built Eastern Middle School.

The school system also is considering filing a lawsuit against the architect and engineer who designed Eastern as well as Kernodle and Hairston middle schools.

Guilford school officials passed up a prime opportunity to improve minority hiring practices when bidding the repair work, Quick said.

Ozment replied that safety concerns at the schools dictated that the system move quickly.

“It evolved and morphed into a situation no one imagined,” Ozment said. “Did we miss an opportunity? I won’t dispute that. But the emergency nature of the situation dictated that we focus on safe schools.

As it turned out, Guilford school officials found out later that day they were in yet another emergency situation, this one more extreme than the structural flaws at the three middle schools. Just as the meeting was adjourning, Eastern Guilford High School caught fire and burned throughout the night. Officials not only had to place the school’s 1,000 students in classrooms somewhere, but also had to deal with the prospect of building a school to replace Eastern.

In a hurry.

Sam Hieb is a contributing editor of Carolina Journal and blogs about issues in the Triad at Piedmont Publius.