Educational conundrum: renovate or consolidate?

APPALACHIA, Va. – A walk into Appalachia High School is a walk down memory lane for those who graduated decades ago.

“The school actually has not changed any at all,” said Bill Seabolt, a 1967 graduate who now volunteers there. “Everything’s the same, [even] the bathrooms.”

Listening to those who’ve spoken at public meetings debating school consolidation, a lot of people like it that way.

The chalkboards are as familiar as the ancient floor tile, the drafty metal windows and the dingy cinder block walls, which are strung with wires to accommodate technology that includes antique filmstrip projector screens. Much of the furniture dates to the 1950s.

But in classrooms empty for the summer at Appalachia High, a prayer is scrawled on some of the original chalkboards: “God, please save our school.”

The trouble is, in their current state the buildings can stand only so long and the clock is ticking.

It’s a situation that is forcing many of Virginia’s coalfield counties to assess their school buildings and painfully acknowledge the changes that have taken place since the boom-time years.

“We don’t want to consolidate the schools that existed here 40 or 50 years ago,” said Jewell Askins, chairwoman of the Dickenson County School Board, which is headed toward consolidation. “Those schools don’t exist now.”

Most Southwest Virginia counties have addressed the problem with renovation, consolidation or some combination of the two. Two counties, Wise and Smyth, have yet to choose.

A Wise choice?

The debate over renovation vs. consolidation in Wise County has come to define local politics.

The key issue: Whether to consolidate the six aging high schools, five of which still lack such modern features such as air conditioning, into three new facilities.

The Wise County School Board and Board of Supervisors are at odds over what to do. And with a nearly even split among residents and elected leaders, the county so far has opted for neither.

The School Board has voted by a 5-3 majority more than once to consolidate. Putting three new schools on one site would cost about $72 million, according to a board proposal; putting them on three separate sites would cost more than $90 million.

A divided Board of Supervisors has limited the school system to $42 million for capital improvements and expressed distaste for consolidation.

Proposals also have been made over the past several years to renovate all six schools. But if the supervisors won’t pay for consolidation into new schools, the School Board plans to consolidate within the existing buildings to cut operating costs and expand the curriculum.

J.H. Rivers, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, said he hopes the issue can be put to rest with a joint meeting of the two boards. That meeting, however, has yet to be scheduled.

Wise County school Superintendent Jeff Perry said the length of time the consolidation debate has dragged on – more than a decade – has created increased urgency.

“Some people thought that it would’ve been irresponsible to put an enormous amount of capital improvement into a particular building that we were not going to use in another two or three years,” Perry said.

As a result, he said, needed improvements have been put off for years.

“They kept thinking next year we’re going to consolidate,” Seabolt said, “and it’s just drawn out to where they let the schools get in pretty bad shape.”

Mark Hutchinson, who represents Appalachia on the Wise County School Board, said education has suffered because of the prolonged debate.

“It’s dominated our lives,” Hutchinson said of the consolidation issue. “Our schools are suffering because of it. We’ve focused on consolidation instead of education, and henceforth you have the results – we have a bunch of schools that haven’t made AYP [adequate yearly progress].”

He said opposition to consolidation is driven by the fear that, without the high school, dwindling communities such as Appalachia will cease to exist. And, he said, kids can get a good education in small schools, so most people would rather see the old buildings renovated than send their children outside the community.

Perry said that even if the money could be found to completely renovate all six high schools, more opportunities can be offered in larger, state-of-the-art buildings. Plus, he said, as enrollment continues to decline, the school system might not have the money to run that many schools.

“When all those individuals made the decision 50 years ago to build these schools, they were under the same kind of pressures that we’re under,” Perry said. “Things were not great economically, people were struggling in a lot of different ways, and they had to consolidate some of the smaller schools to build these larger schools.”

Other priorities

Like many of the surrounding counties, Smyth County has lost population, said Mike Robinson, superintendent of schools. But looking at the numbers, the county’s 5 percent population loss is nowhere close to the double-digit losses experienced by some neighboring counties.

A facilities study completed two years ago on the Smyth County school building needs set the price tag at $100 million – a figure Robinson called unreasonable.

Among the concerns raised in the consultant’s report: cracking foundations, falling ceiling tiles, heating and cooling failures, and inadequate electricity.

Robinson said “new schools or complete renovation” was the recommendation.

“Nobody can afford that,” Robinson said of the nine-digit figure. “There isn’t a locality probably anywhere in Southwest Virginia that could afford that.”

Instead, he said, the county is looking at $20 million to $25 million to build one school and renovate another. But, with a $25 million courthouse renovation project required by the state court system, it’s unclear how many years it will take for the school project to be funded.

In the meantime, building upgrades aren’t cheap, Robinson said, and budget cuts have meant even more cuts to the schools’ bare bones maintenance budget.

“When you have a financial crisis … all of us have to cut back our maintenance budgets to keep our people employed,” he said. “You have to make difficult choices like that.”

Michael Carter, acting county administrator for Smyth County, said the timing is bad.

“Obviously, we can’t do everything, so we’ll make our best attempt at accommodating both [the courthouse and the schools], and as we get, hopefully, a better turnaround in the economy ... maybe we can look at some different avenues at that point,” he said.

County and school officials in Smyth praise each other for working together on the issue. But the decision, at least for now, remains up in the air.

“We are in total support of helping them get what they need,” Supervisor Darlene Neitch said of the schools. But, she said, most taxpayers would rather see services cut than taxes raised.

“The taxpayers have got about all they can handle right now, and there’s no way that we can say we’re going to have a $25 million courthouse debt and we’re going to have a $25 million school debt and we’re going to have to add enough onto the taxes to pay both of these for the next 30 years,” Neitch said. “That would be totally unfair. And especially now, with the economy like it is.”

dmccown@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0701