Amid burgeoning population growth across North Carolina, more than 90 community leaders and government officials met Aug. 30 to discuss challenges surrounding school construction and finance needs.
Dubbed “County Pressures: The Realities of School Construction Demands,” the one-day conference, sponsored by the N.C. Association of County Commissioners, at the Exploris Museum was attended by officials from more than 30 counties across the state. The central question: how to meet school capital requirements and overcome hindrances that prevent counties from keeping pace with increasing demands for school space.
“Education is at the heart of our economic success,” said Tony Gurley, chairman of the Wake County Board of Commissioners. Wake County alone is growing by 7,000 new students each year, Gurley said, and the county’s overall population is expected to double in the next five years.
According to a preliminary report by the State Board of Education and Department of Public Instruction, the number of K-12 students statewide will grow by 15.2 percent the next 10 years. Total facility needs will be almost $10 billion over the next five-year period, most of those funds being devoted to school construction and renovations and additions to schools. That number is up by 57 percent since the Facility Needs Survey in 2000.
The SBOE/DPI study attributed this mammoth budget to estimated student population growth. “The most common justification for reporting needs for new schools, renovations and additions is to accommodate projected enrollment growth,” the report stated. “Easing current crowding and replacing obsolete facilities are also major factors in the need for new construction on campuses throughout North Carolina.”
Much of the growth is also fueled by a massive influx of immigrants, both legal and illegal. According to Gurley, 2,000 of the 7,000-student increase each year “can be attributed to undocumented immigrants.” Wake County commissioners plan to investigate the financial implications of the immigration flood by the end of the year, Gurley said.
In addition to outlining challenges facing the state, a lineup of panelists offered various suggestions for solving impending school construction needs. One of the topics discussed was increasing the amount of public-private partnerships, a process that typically involves a contract between a school district and a private developer to build a school and lease it back to the school system.
“We have to figure a way to provide a smorgasbord of options for people in their communities,” said Sen. Vernon Malone, D–Wake. Malone also touted public-private partnership legislation approved during the last session of the General Assembly. SB 2009, Public-Private Partnerships for Schools, passed overwhelmingly in both the state House and Senate, is designed to allow capital lease financing for public schools in North Carolina.
Another option put forth by panelists was the organization of blue ribbon committees. Composed of community leaders, the committees are designed to examine the adequacy of school infrastructure and to weigh potential solutions for improvement. According to Gurley, recommendations by Wake County’s chapter included re-evaluating school design, increasing the cap on charter schools, expanding public-private partnerships and increasing the amount of year-round schools.
Frank Holding, a representative from the Wake County Blue Ribbon Committee, reported that the 65 members of Wake’s group had fairly common growth assumptions for future population and school needs. They also agreed on how those assumptions translated into actual infrastructure requirements for the county. But Holding conceded that “when it came to determining where the money would come from,” committee members “could not agree on what to tell politicians” was required.
“We are going to face some real hurdles in the coming years,” Holding said. “We will be in a crisis unless change happens. We will have to deal with these issues in ‘crisis mode.’”
Despite past assurances that proceeds from the N.C. Education Lottery would help solve the state’s school construction needs, panelists were reluctant to tout the cure-all benefits of the numbers game. “The lottery is going to solve everything, right?” said Ben Matthews, director of School Support Services for DPI. “Absolutely not. Many people in the public mistakenly thought that it would.”
Since the lottery is a new source of revenue, it is difficult to be certain of the exact amount each county will receive for school construction, said panelist Vance Holloman, deputy treasurer of the State and Local Finance Division. Just $160.5 million in lottery funds have been earmarked for school construction, constituting less than 2 percent of the estimated five-year budget.
David Salvesen, of the UNC Center for Urban and Regional Studies, suggested the implementation of adaptive reuse as a way to overcome obstacles to state and local school construction. Vacant malls, warehouses or big-box retail spots could be converted into schools, Salvesen said.
A similar plan of adaptive reuse has been successfully used in Wake County. In 1998, Wake’s school district converted the vacant American Sterilizer Company, a 150,000-square-foot facility near Apex, into Lufkin Road Middle School. The school site was needed to house 800 displaced ninth-grade students.
One major advantage of this option was the expedited construction process: The facility was converted in only one year, while a new school construction would have taken two to three years to complete, increasing the overall cost to taxpayers.
David N. Bass is an editorial intern of Carolina Journal.