Anytime you spend a couple of billion dollars building, renovating and repairing school buildings, there’s going to be some disagreement as to how that money should be allocated.
Some of that conversation took place at a Guilford County Board of Commissioners meeting on Thursday, April 20, and much more of it will occur on Tuesday, April 25, when the county commissioners and school board members – along with county and school system staff – meet for a work session on school facilities projects.
Between a $300 million school bond referendum that Guilford County voters approved in 2020, and a $1.7 billion referendum in 2022, the schools now have funding for quite a large number of projects that are on the drawing board – and those plans are already beginning to garner some negative feedback.
The commissioners want to track the expenditure of that money closely and that’s one reason the Joint Capital/Facilities Committee was formed several years ago. The group, consisting of Guilford County Commissioners and Board of Education members has scheduled the work session for Tuesday, April 25 at 4 p.m.in the John McAdoo Conference Room on the third floor of the county owned Truist Bank Building at 201 W. Market St. in downtown Greensboro.
The official stated purpose of the work session is “to receive updates on school facilities and construction projects and any other necessary business.”
The commissioners don’t run the school system, but they do have ultimate say over the purse strings for the $2 billion that the schools are in the process of spending to update facilities. In order for the school system to spend one penny of that money, the commissioners have to give their approval.
At the Board of Commissioners’ Thursday, April 20 meeting, the commissioners heard an earful from several speakers from the floor who were displeased with current school plans – especially plans for a proposed new K-8 school near Colfax.
Two days before that April 20 commissioners’ meeting, residents in the area of the proposed new school met with Guilford County Schools (GCS) representatives. One woman who was at that meeting told the commissioners that the meeting with school officials didn’t go well.
“Over 50 people were in attendance on short notice,” she said. “No one was happy – it was a contentious meeting. The meeting hosted by GCS representatives fell short on professionalism, transparency, and addressing any concerns residents have.”
She also said the roads to the school were hilly and had sharp turns that were not conducive to school traffic.
“It’s a disaster waiting to happen,” she told the commissioners at the board’s April 20 meeting.
Guilford County Commissioner James Upchurch also had some tough comments at the meeting for the school system’s plan. He noted some of the residents’ complaints about the K-8 school. He said it turns out that the property is too small to host a planned STEM Program and also that students wouldn’t be able to start taking classes at the school until 2026 or 2027.
That’s just one of the school projects that county residents have concerns about, so there will be plenty for the commissioners and school board members to discuss at the April 25 joint committee work session.
The meeting room will be open to the public and there will also be a virtual viewing option using Zoom at https://www.zoomgov.com/j/1611548298.
In addition, the meeting will be livestreamed on Guilford County’s Facebook page.
Copies of the work session agenda will be available prior to the start of the meeting at https://guilford.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx.
You can contact Deputy Clerk Ariane Webb at awebb@guilfordcountync.gov with any questions.
Over $2,000,000,000, plus untold interest dollars and the best we can do is place a school on a hilly curvy country road?
Who’s in charge here?
Defund the liberal school board until they show fiscal and moral responsibility.
As usual, the monkees are running the zoo. Just waiting to see the waste and muckups. Yep, SNAFU.
Dropping a school in a residential area at the end of someone’s driveway is always popular with residents! HA! What are these people thinking? They say they are trying to honor Katherine Johnson, a pioneering African American female NASA mathematician…but they wasted our money elsewhere so they are dropping the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) component because the site is too small. Again, HA! Perhaps they spent all their money with the Fortune 500 company (CBRE) they hired to cram this through. They apparently now can’t afford anything in an appropriate area so they are going to terrorize someone’s neighborhood with a 900 student school! And at their meeting they said they didn’t want the conditional zoning to be too restrictive, because they want to use it 24/7 for ‘other events’ as well. James Upchurch was right when he called this a “garbage plan”. They say they think people will be for this if they just “explain it better”. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Remember folks, all those free spending, power happy, ‘I guess I should think about the kids’ supposed representatives (read National Socialist) Democrats really need to be held accountable. It’s called researching the candidates and vote for YOUR children.
And watch out for their pet Republican aka RINO.
Yes, I said it.