Richmond School Board to discuss building schools

Will a new Huguenot High School be built by the end of 2013? That is the $81 million question facing the Richmond School Board.

The School Board will meet Thursday for the first of two scheduled work sessions to discuss building new schools in the city for the first time in a decade. A decision on which schools to build could come as early as Nov. 16.

If the board alters construction priorities and chooses an option recently proposed by Mayor Dwight C. Jones, which includes a new Huguenot High School in South Richmond, it will reduce the number of projects and surpass current funding by $23.9 million.

Replacing Huguenot, which was built in 1961, is projected to cost $81.3 million—more than half of the $149 million currently allotted to school construction by the City Council.

If the School Board votes to shift priorities, Jones indicated he will work with the council to reallocate funds to offset the cost difference.

In a recent meeting with the School Board, Jones cited poor infrastructure and small classrooms as key reasons to replace the high school in South Richmond that was built by Chesterfield County and later annexed into the city. Huguenot opened Sept. 6, 1960.

Jones’ children attended Huguenot High School.

The current plan for school construction, which was approved by the School Board in late 2007 and by the council in early 2008, has the funding set aside to build four elementary schools and one middle school.

Two of those projects, E.S.H. Greene Elementary and Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, were set up in the master plan update as renovation/expansion projects, said John Winter, chief capital projects manager for the city. But, he said, if it’s more cost-efficient to build schools, that remains an option.

A new Huguenot High School is in the school master plan update as a Phase 2 project.

Because of the aggressive timeline set forth by Jones, the School Board may make its decision with little input from the public.

“I think any major alterations to what was voted and decided needs to go back to the public, because it’s a substantial amount of money we are talking about,“ said School Board Vice Chairwoman Kimberly B. Gray. “If it’s some minor tweaking, then I think we’re OK, but if it’s a major shift in the priorities, then public involvement is critical.“

The projected $81.3 million cost for a new high school includes “all costs associated with doing that project,“ Winter said.

“We are hopeful that this budget number is certainly enough and we’re certainly hopeful that it will start costing less than what we have projected at this time,“ Winter said.

In a letter to Chandra Smith, chairwoman of the School Board, Jones wrote, “I am also asking that consideration be given to that school becoming in whole or in part a specialty school as a component of its offerings.“

This isn’t the city’s first attempt in recent years to open a new school. A master plan was developed in 2002, but no funds were available.

That plan was updated in 2007, but progress slowed as then-Mayor L. Douglas Wilder sparred with the School Board.

Paul Goldman, a former Wilder aide, developed Wilder’s City of the Future plan for 2007-2011 that put major emphasis on fixing elementary schools in the plan’s first phase.

Goldman said recently, paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Education delayed is education denied.“

The need for new schools is evident. Richmond has more than 24,000 pre-K through 12th-grade students in buildings whose average age is 60 years old, including seven that will turn 100 by 2015.

By the end of June, the school system spent $4.7 million on utilities, maintenance and repair costs for 49 facilities.

Ultimately, though, many agree that new schools are necessary, but there’s room for discussion about which ones.

“I don’t think we all have to be in agreement—we can agree to disagree—but we have to have a way to settle on an idea and move forward with it and reach a consensus,“ Gray said.

Contact Jeremy Slayton at (804) 649-6861 or .