More than two months after the fire that destroyed Eastern Guilford High School on Nov.1, the Guilford County school officials are still trying to determine how to get its 1,000 students back together under one roof.

Eastern students are divided between temporary campuses at Guilford Technical Community College and the former School for the Deaf in Brown Summit. Keeping the students at two locations for the 2007-08 school year was an option, but Guilford County Schools would not know until February whether GTCC would be available. If GTCC were unavailable, it would be too late to formulate an alternate plan for the 2007-08 school year, GCS Superintendent Terry Grier told the Guilford County Board of Education.

But split campuses are the least-desirable option for parents and students, who want everyone under one roof next year. Toward that goal, parents lobbied GCS to purchase the Carolina Corporate Center in McLeansville. At 100,000 square feet, the center, formerly an office for Lucent Technologies, would be more than adequate space.

Proposals from real estate developers to either buy or lease the building were put before the school board during a recent meeting. Grier told the board it would cost $40 million to buy the building and an additional $94 million to renovate it. The projected cost to rebuild Eastern is $51 million.

The $40 million purchase is also considerably higher than the building’s $24 million tax value.

“Somebody’s trying to get rich off the school system,” said school board member Anita Sharpe.

So while it quickly became apparent that buying the building was out of the question, leasing it became a matter of debate. Michael McCloskey of Florida Realty Investments, the company that owns the building, told GCS that renovations under a lease agreement would come in at $20 per square foot. That figure, combined with an $837,000 annual lease, would cost GCS $4.67 million over two years.

But both Grier and facilities consultant Joe Hill were skeptical of the $20 per-square-foot figure, given the stringent school safety codes mandated by the state. They, along with school board Chairman Alan Duncan, thought the cost to be $50 per square foot, bringing the total cost to $9 million.

“I’m not sure (McCloskey) understands the North Carolina safety standards,” Grier said.

While the board considered the cost of leasing the Lucent building, Grier made one other recommendation, which would be to house students in temporary modular classrooms next to the construction site of the new Eastern.

That option did not guarantee that ninth-graders would be able to join site with the rest of the students at the temporary school, which was dubbed the “Village at Eastern.” Safety concerns were raised about students coming and going to school next to a construction site, especially since the majority of ninth-graders ride the bus to school.

Another major problem is ninth-graders are required to take physical education classes, but the “village” wouldn’t have a gymnasium. Students could use outdoor facilities in nice weather, but an indoor health education curriculum would have to be developed for bad weather days.

Putting ninth-graders on the site would also be more expensive—$3.1 million, as opposed to $2.7 million to house grades 10 through 12.

While the option of placing ninth-graders at the village, even at the greater expense, was left open for a December meeting, the board passed Sharpe’s motion to place grades 10 through12 in the modular classrooms.

Hanging over discussion of where to temporarily place students was the issue of paying for the new Eastern. Duncan was in favor of rolling the dice and placing it on a bond referendum that hopefully will be on the ballot next spring.

“I don’t mean to hold Eastern Guilford hostage to whether or not a bond referendum passes,” Duncan said. “But I think it’s appropriate to finance it in the best possible way, and that’s a bond referendum.”

But the majority of the board disagreed with Duncan, voting 7-4 to seek approval for $41 million in certificate of participation funds to supplement $10 million in insurance money to pay for the new high school.

Under a normal construction schedule, the new school would be ready by fall 2009, sooner if at all possible.

“People are working very hard to find every possible way that time can be expedited,” Duncan said. “But we don’t know for a certainty that it can.”

Sam Hieb is a contributing editor of Carolina Journal.