State law requires the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction to survey school systems every five years to assess their facility needs. Surveys include plans for building new schools, renovating older schools, and the cost of furnishings and land. In 2001, these items totaled $6.2 billion. What’s the price tag now? According to the 2006 Facility Needs Survey, it’s a whopping $9.7 billion.
Since 1995, North Carolina voters have approved over $5.7 billion in bond money at the ballot box. This year alone, school construction bond referendums are likely to exceed $1.5 billion. Taxpayers in the state have already paid out nearly $2 billion for school facilities since 2001. Are we spending ourselves into oblivion? Former Senator Everett Dirksen’s quip comes to mind: “A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
What can we do to curb spending? For starters, we need to find less expensive ways to build schools. Across the nation, school systems feeling the pinch are entering into innovative public-private partnerships. Some states already allow private companies to build schools to be leased by the government since the private sector often builds faster and more economically than government entities. Our General Assembly ought to give local systems greater flexibility—not less, as Wake Superintendent Bill McNeal seems to think—to form these partnerships; we should also consider emulating Florida’s practice of providing incentives to creative school systems that save construction dollars.
Unnecessarily stringent building regulations also jack up costs, and should be reevaluated by the General Assembly. Currently, when a 4-year-old attends school in North Carolina, the Department of Health and Human Services gets involved. This means that systems taking pre-school (More at Four) money are forced to renovate perfectly adequate classrooms for 5-year-olds that are somehow not “up to code” for 4-year-olds. Making these conversions can cost $50,000 or more. Is this really a good use of our money?
Finally, our state legislature should earmark much more of the lottery proceeds for school construction. Doing so would decrease the likelihood of lottery money supplanting education dollars from the general operating budget and would ease the burden of property taxes on taxpayers. This could be accomplished during the 2006 short session of the General Assembly.
The $9.7 billion request highlights our need for greater frugality. Yes, student growth in our state has produced a facilities crisis in some counties. But this should heighten our urgency to employ thrift and creativity as we provide students with functional schools. It’s “real” money, after all, and a lot of it is coming from your wallet.