CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – After the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors strongly rebuffed the School Board’s plan to build a new, fourth high school, during a joint work session this week, School Board chairperson Dr. Kate Acuff said there needs to be more data looked at going forward.
“We need a bit more data, and we need a longer timeline to plan for a new high school,” Acuff said during an appearance on WINA Morning News. “And I believe that’s where we’re going”.
Supervisors indeed asked where the data was to justify a $230-million expenditure for a new high school, especially with the fact a new center is opening next year to help relieve some capacity.
Supervisor Bea Lapisto-Kirtley acknowledged the population is expected to grow in the county of about 30,000 more people within the next 20 years.
“Of course, all of those are not school children,” Lapisto-Kirtley. “Across the nation the birth rate is going down. People are waiting to have children. They’re not having as many children.”
Lapisto-Kirtley said the Supervisors want the School Board to commission a third-party study.
“Give us a best guess for the future, what are the trends for the future,” she said.
Lapisto-Kirtley said the new high school “was not even on the radar” when the budget was discussed last spring.
“That’s something we need to look at because that’s a heck of a lot of money,” she said.
Acuff said supervisors first considered a plan to build a new school in 2017.
“There was little enthusiasm at that time, and that was absolutely fair, to build a new high school,” she said. “We were just coming out of the Great Recession, and at that time a new high school was estimated to cost about $120-million, and as you can see from the numbers in the conversation on Wednesday, prices never go down.”
So they looked at options to modernize schools, provide the least disruption to the county, and address capacity.
“The initial proposal was to either build or rent space for a series of centers over time, and substantially modernize our three existing high schools, and provide additions also as capacity needs presented themselves,” Acuff said.
What has happened is a five-year delay in building the center, and the Board of Supervisors, because of COVID, becoming understandably more fiscally conservative, Acuff said.
But that delay building the center, along with cutting the size by one-third to lower the cost, and expansions and renovations at the other high schools not taking place, Acuff said the schools are facing overcrowding issues.
Acuff also noted increased development in the county, especially in the northern corridor, which, “gives one pause in terms of our needs”.
Acuff said she understands the Board of Supervisors must make some very tough decisions.
“We are all residents of the county and we actually like to have first responders, and recycling centers, and parks, as well,” Acuff said. “But our job is to advocate for the school division, and that’s what we have done.”
She feels Wednesday’s meeting started the tough conversations that need to occur and continue.
“The biggest challenge for both the school board and the board of supervisors is to look to put a placeholder, in my view, in the capital planning,” Acuff said. “What do we need to do to get to the point we can say ‘yes’ to a new high school, and there are going to tradeoffs, I’m sure.”
One thing that could boost the chances for a new county high school, would be the legislature re-passing the proposed 1-cent sales tax to benefit public school capital projects that outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed.
If that is passed again and signed by incoming Gov. Abigail Spanberger, Albemarle County residents would vote in a referendum.
“That would be a very big boost, frankly, to get that,” Lapisto-Kirtley said, noting county schools would get $26 million annually. “That’s something that they desperately need. We hope it will pass. And if it does pass, we hope the good people of Albemarle will also pass it, because the schools can really, really use that.”
