RALEIGH – The state’s largest school district, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, set a goal of spending $2 billion over the next 10 years on school construction and renovation. Last month, voters said no to the initial $427 million installment of that, forcing local leaders to come up with a new plan, but no one denies that CMS will have to build many new schools.
The second-largest district, Wake County, may not be before long. Enrollment is exploding. Its leaders want to spend a mind-boggling $4.25 billion to $5.6 billion on school buildings over the decade (the range is based on varying assumptions about the use of mandatory year-round schools).
Guilford, Forsyth, New Hanover, Cumberland, Buncombe – all of these, and many smaller districts, are also contemplating major new investments in public-school capacity in the coming years. The size of the resulting debt would be staggering. Unless the policy dynamics change, this will impose a large new claim on the incomes of North Carolinians, confiscated either through increases in local property or sales taxes, new charges on homes and real-estate transfers, or higher state taxes to finance state bond issues.
It need not come to that. Now is the time for state and local policymakers to change those policy dynamics, to embrace some ideas and set better priorities with the existing, already copious funds appropriated to North Carolina public education. Here are six simple tools for renovating school-construction policy:
• Remove all barriers to public-private partnerships and leasing arrangements. As Terry Stoops explains in a recent JLF report, districts in other states are working with developers and the private sector to provide schools more creatively and efficiently.
• Renovate existing structures and use new construction materials and techniques to reduce cost.
• Remember what schools are primarily for: education. Focus scarce resources on well-designed instructional spaces, not other amenities. Take a page from charter and private schools to which parents willingly and enthusiastically send their children.
• Speaking of, lift the statewide cap of 100 charter schools so that many families can choose this public-school option. It is crazy not to let philanthropists, private firms, and volunteers raise money to build public schools if they want to, particularly because a fair reading of the evidence reveals that, at worst, charter schools deliver the same test performance and higher parental satisfaction at a lower cost.
• Also speaking of, use tax relief or scholarship programs to reduce the cost to parents who choose private or homeschooling for their children. Again, it is absurd to spend billions on new schools when existing educational spaces and homes can be employed (not to mention the broader educational benefits).
• Finally, eliminate the counties’ funding responsibility for Medicaid. This would create what would amount to a larger, faster-growing revenue stream for county school construction than any new tax would generate.
Let’s get to it.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.