The Board of Education recently adopted the following Goal:
In order to provide the most appropriate, well maintained, and effective educational environment for our students, and do it in the most fiscally appropriate manner, the Board will, by the end of the 2011-2012 school year, have in place a 25 year Facilities Plan that includes the maintenance, renovations and anticipated new facilities that are necessary to carry out the instructional programs for our children.
A community and school committee of 25 members is working up a recommended plan to present to the Board for their review. The committee has met 3 times already reviewing the current status of our facilities and will meet at least a few more times to develop the plan. The idea is to have a short range 3-5 year part of the plan, a 5-15 year part of the plan and a long range part of the plan that may go beyond the 25 years. We want to make sure we proactively provide what our community needs for the education of the children.
Why the goal?
Schools have only 2 sources of funds for maintaining schools.
One, like a home owner, is a mortgage or home equity loan. In the schools case it is called a bond sale. Those bonds are then paid off with property tax collections over a number of years. That is how large projects are funded like Whitko Middle School 17 years ago and the Whitko High School 4 years ago.
The other fund is called Capital Projects. This fund pays for maintaining the buildings but over the years as the state has provided less money to send to school for buying technology, or paying utilities, these costs have shifted to the Capital Projects fund and have decreased the funds available for maintenance. Capital Projects now is barely keeping up with roof replacement, driveway sealing and technology. We fear as the middle and high school begin to need more maintenance the fund will not be able to keep up.
Additionally our elementary buildings have not been substantially renovated since the 1980s and are showing their age.
Rather than wait the Board wants a plan to address the issue of keeping appropriate educational facilities for our kids.
