School facilities study documents overbuilding by more than $24 million | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    The Beaufort County Commissioners got a sobering report from architect James Hite Monday night (2-6-12) at its regular monthly meeting. Hite and Associates were hired to do a school facilities survey. The tentative results presented Monday night showed that the schools are overbuilt by 2217 student seats or 27.8% in excess capacity.

    You can review the number for each school by clicking here.

    Those numbers were computed by measuring every classroom in the system and applying State standards to compute the capacity of each school. The number of students was the count of students in membership (ADM) for the first month of school this year (2011). The difference between capacity and enrollment or ADM determined the number of available seats. All total that number added up to 2217.

    The most overbuilt new school is S.W. Snowden which is only used 33% of its capacity. Washington High School is at 98% utilization, while Chocowinity Middle and Eastern are at 89% utilization. Northside is only used about 50%, as is Southside. Southside could clearly have accommodated the middle school students from Aurora, eliminating the need to add on to that campus when the old Snowden was closed, while using the buses that transport high school students from Aurora to Southside. Similarly, more students could have been assigned to Northside rather than PS Jones. That would have nearly eliminated the need for John Small and relieved crowding at Washington High School.

    Another way to look at the same numbers is to say that the 2217 excess seats represent two elementary schools and a middle school or four elementary schools at an average cost of approximately $24 million.

    In 2004 the voters were told that the School Board needed $33 million and they approved a bond issue to borrow that money. But the School Board and the Gang of Five on the County Commission (Ed Booth, Robert Cayton, Al Klemm, Jerry Langley, and Jay McRoy) approved spending $39.4 million, going $6.4 million over budget. They did so by building Snowden much larger than was needed, and building John Small (the last bond project) when they could have avoided that $10.8 million expenditure.

    And it is not as if they did not know better. The Beaufort Observer has been saying since 2005 that the School Board and County Commissioners were not planning correctly. Hood Richardson and Stan Deatherage presented a plan in 2004 that showed how the projected enrollment could be accommodated for less than $20 million. The Gang of Five went ahead and spent $39.4 million.

    And a footnote: The current calculated capacity is considerably lower than was the case in 2004. Part of that difference has come about because the state standards have been increased. But part of it comes from the way the current capacities have been calculated. We see no need to quibble over that, except to say that the actual, realistic capacity is much closer to 4000 over existing enrollment than it is to 2217. And the population is continuing to decline every year. Thus, even if they continue to revise the capacity lower, the population is declining even faster.

    For the "We told you so" file, the Beaufort Observer said in 2008:

    The problem was created when Jeff Moss decided to just replace P. S. Jones, John Small and add space at Bath and Aurora without looking at the existing utilization, its condition and projected life, or how space could be used more efficiently (i.e., eliminate the duplication at Jones/Small or restructure the grade structure at Bath.) But the worst sin he committed was to ignore the demographic data...the shifts in student population. It's like the family that struggled in a three bedroom house for years while four kids were growing up that then went and built a seven bedroom house just as the last kid graduated and went off to college.

    If you are a glutton for punishment you can read more of what the Observer has documented over the years at the links below:

    A History of the $33 Million School Bonds.

    Schools have wasted millions in their building program.