The Guilford County Board of Commissioners met with the Guilford County Board of Education on Monday, Oct. 23 to discuss the school systems’ current progress on construction and repair projects as well as the system’s need for funds.
School officials are already putting millions of dollars in bond money to use and, come February of next year, they’ll have another $180 million in the bank in order to move forward with a host of desired capital projects.
Actually, the Guilford County government will hold that money in the bank until the Board of Commissioners approves its transfer – in portions – to the schools to pay for projects on an as needed basis.
Guilford County voters approved a $1.7 billion school bond referendum in the 2022 election, but this money isn’t coming from that referendum. The $180 million the county will raise with the sale of bonds early next year is the remainder of the $300 million school bond referendum that county voters approved in 2020.
At the meeting, the commissioners also discussed issuing $510 million dollars in school bonds in late 2024 or early 2025. However, school officials said it’s not clear at what rate Guilford County Schools will be able to spend the money since it has been very hard to find contractors in the current economic environment.
Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston said at the meeting that these repair, security and construction projects for the school system are very important and school officials should find a way to move things along faster.
“Go out of state if you have to,” Alston said of finding builders and other providers needed for these projects.
Alston said after the meeting that he felt certain there were workers and companies who would take these jobs, but that school officials seemed overly focused on using local and state contractors and builders.
The county doesn’t want to raise money through bond sales before the funds are needed because, as soon as the county sells the bonds, that bond debt starts accruing interest that the county will have to pay back along with the principle payments.
More money will not improve our children’s education. It is the policies of the Democrat School Board that determines that our children are taught what to think, not how to think.
Secondly, no matter how much money they extort from us, it is never enough. So why should we give them any more?
And, if the County can’t put the money to use now; rather than throw it away, they can counter bond interest cost by purchasing T-Bills, at nearly 5% yield. Skip-the-Hyp don’t know Jack about money.
Name something our govt does well.
Actually, school curriculum is set at the State the level.
Lol…..” go out of state”. I thought Skip already had all the needed qualified black contractors ready to go. What’s the problem? Is your racists reputation coming back to haunt you?
Contractors that I know and talked with don’t want to deal with your RACIST mwbe bullsh$$ skip. What part of this don’t you understand. They all saw what you pulled on Samet. So up yours skip. I’m sure you can get a lot of black contractors to bid these jobs It’s just taxpayers money so why do you care if you have to pay 25-40% more for substandard work.
How are school bonds sold? Will they be sold through local banks or credit unions?
Didn’t they raise our property taxes to help with the school system? To many taxes and nothing to show for it.
6.5%…? Bidenomics adding to our tax bill!
How do we get a copy of the bond proposal? Showing specifically how the funds are to be used.
Skip Alston knows nothing about education. Look at his background, education is missing. Skippy is motivated by Black students’ low performance and dropouts. These problems cannot be fixed with more money. New school construction will not solve the problem. The real problems will be transferred to the new schools. In a matter of time, these shiny new schools will look like the old schools, low performance will be the same as before, but the taxpayer will be paying higher and higher taxes. As far as maintenance is concerned, bonds should not be necessary to pay for maintenance. Guilford County and the school board have allowed school buildings to disintegrate because of failed leadership. Who pays for the poor leadership? The taxpayer.
Where is the money going that is received from lottery sales. I remember this being a big part of the plan when we got the lottery. Never heard anything about all that money.
So they had an additional $180,000,000 in approved but unspent bond money since 2020. However, they chose to allow some schools to deteriorate due to “deferred maintenance”. Then Skip paraded around pointing out rot, decay, mold, leaky roofs, and failing HVAC systems to get another bond even though. They had the funds to mitigate a lot of the problems that were actually of their own making to manipulate the voters. At the same time, they fought tooth and nail to keep a possibly dissenting view off the school board so they had an open field to pull these shenanigans again and again. I will be voting no on any further bond referendums for the county.
Save your kids! Homeschool them. Make sacrifices as necessary to do so. The government is unfit to educate children and gives us more reasons why almost daily.
These were no doubt passed as two-thirds bonds, so bend over… They won’t need your approval for the next round of bonds. You unwittingly gave them a blank check and the authority to write many more. Next time vote NO for bonds and NO to progressive libtards.