Joint School Board/Commissioners meeting focuses on capital needs | Eastern North Carolina Now

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

    The Beaufort County Board of Commissioners and the Beaufort County Board of Education held a joint meeting Monday (4-1-13) the hour before the regularly scheduled Commissioners' meeting. The purpose of the meeting was for the School Board to share with the Commissioners lists of their capital needs and to offer the Commissioners an opportunity "...to provide guidance to the School Board on what the Commissioners' priorities are in the development of a budget for next year."

    Capital needs are those things for which the Commissioners make appropriations that are expected to not be consumed in a single year. Included are maintenance, renovations, equipment and in some cases land and buildings.

    The discussion was rather free flowing with each commissioners offering his ideas about how the School Board should approach the task.

    Hood Richardson emphasized the need to separate out the issue of what to do about the Ed. Tech. building and the other capital needs. He indicated that he "...would have a hard time voting to build more floor space when the Architect Study done last year showed that there are over 2000 unused student spaces in the system.

    School Board Chair Cindy Winstead seemed to challenge that assumption saying "...you keep saying 2000 spaces but I haven't found them yet." Richardson responded by asking if all the current board members had been furnished a copy of the Hite Facilities Study and he was assured that each member would get a copy. It was that study that said the system had overbuilt by over 2000 student seats, which is the equivalent of three schools, or approximately $20 million. Of course, the spaces are scattered unevenly across all the schools, leading Richardson to suggest that student reassignment might be called for. "I want to see the existing space used as efficiently as possible before I vote to build more," Richardson said.

    Commissioner Al Klemm said he wanted to see a multi-year capital plan, including maintenance.

    Stan Deatherage emphasized the need for stronger vocational education programs. Superintendent Phipps continually stress the need for greater collaboration with the Community College to offer more sophisticated vocational training.

    The Ed. Tech Center is house in the old P.S. Jones/John Small building. It has relatively very few students, not nearly enough to support a comprehensive vocational program with so few students. And former School Board Chair/now Commissioner Robert Belcher pointed out that many of the Ed. Tech students need basic reading and math skills in order to take advantage of vocational courses.

    The School Board will continue to work on its list and present a revised version to the Commissioner before the end of April they said.

    You can watch the entire session in the video clip below: