School construction needs are ‘much greater’ than governor’s $80 million proposal

In the decade since Virginia last had money to help school districts with construction needs, localities have turned elsewhere to get projects done.

Isle of Wight County secured more than $7 million in federal loans to tear down Windsor Middle School and replace it with Georgie D. Tyler Middle School. Virginia Beach sold bonds to finance replacing Great Neck Middle School.

But those and other now-completed projects still sit near the top of the state’s waiting list — a list frozen in time that may thaw if lawmakers approve a one-time allocation included in Gov. Ralph Northam’s next budget proposal.

Either the $80 million set aside by the governor for loans or a competing proposal from state Sen. Bill Stanley to offer up to $4 billion in bonds would end a decade without state support for school construction projects, an area where Virginia has lagged behind neighboring states.

The conversation alone is leaving educators hopeful and cautious of criticizing either plan, which the General Assembly will consider once it convenes in January. But the true level of need is probably closer to Stanley’s number, said Mary Filardo, the director of the 21st Century School Fund and a national advocate for improving school facilities.

“The $4 billion is really a reasonable proposal,” Filardo said. “The $80 million loan program is just really not.”

Before the recession, there was a school construction grant fund and a low-interest loan program — the one Northam proposes reviving — but funding sources dried up in 2009.

Right now, districts front the cost of school construction across the state, on top of local governments’ required share of the cost of educating kids. To avoid cuts to classroom programs, most districts have deferred work on facilities.

For months with increasing alarm, Hampton Roads districts have tried to make clear they can no longer put off needed repairs and replacements. When legislators toured Norfolk and Portsmouth schools earlier in the fall, they were shown leaky ceilings and crumbling plaster and breathed the musty air that thousands of students and teachers deal with daily.

“The need is much greater than the resources at the moment,” said Ben Kiser, the director of the state superintendents’ association.

In Norfolk, for instance, a facilities study last year identified $124 million in immediate needs, not counting money needed to renovate or replace Maury High School, the oldest continuously operated high school in the state. The full list of capital renewal needs totals $492 million.

Newport News’ facility study, completed last year, tallied up $505 million in maintenance and other projects needed in the next 15 years. There, the school board is in its eighth attempt to seek money from the city council to replace Huntington Middle, where the deteriorating interior and crumbling exterior forced its closure in June, displacing students.

“I think it’s wonderful that the state is stepping up because, outside of Northern Virginia, it’s very hard for rural areas and localities to maintain our existing infrastructure that dates from the last century,” said School Board member Shelly Simonds.

“The average age of our buildings in Newport News is over 50 years old. We don’t as a school board want to have to divert money from student instruction to make essential repairs to our buildings.”

Northam’s proposal is a one-time injection of cash into the state’s Literary Fund, the pre-recession era source of loans, up to $7.5 million per project. There’s a waiting list of projects, and Northam said the $80 million was intended to cover all of the outstanding projects.

Not all of those projects still need funding, though, and no new projects have been added since 2013, making it an incomplete record of the true needs throughout the state.

At some point, knowing there wasn’t any money to be distributed, districts and localities just stopped applying, said John O’Neil, a spokesman for the Virginia Education Association.

In addition to the Isle of Wight and Virginia Beach projects, three on the list from southwest Virginia’s Wise County have already been completed — and one of the schools has since closed. The state board approached Petersburg and Northampton County, districts with the top two priority projects, earlier this year to award loans but were told there wasn’t a need anymore, Deputy Secretary of Education Holly Coy said.

Those deferrals leap-frogged the third project on the list, a Technology Center in Giles County, to the top in November. Since it was added to the list in April 2009, the project has already been completed with locally borrowed funds. But the Literary Fund loan, according to board documents, will be used to refinance that initial loan at a lower rate of 2 percent.

Coy said that if Northam’s plan prevails, divisions down the list would be contacted as funding allowed and offered loans for construction or the chance to refinance existing loans.

Filardo said the challenge for most localities in Virginia hasn’t been access to financing, thanks to the state’s AAA bond rating. But poorer districts don’t have cash to pay back loans, exacerbating disparities between them and wealthier districts, she said.

Filardo’s group recommends districts spend 4 percent of the total replacement costs of buildings each year on capital improvements, but Virginia localities spend about a third of that currently. An additional $400 million per year, what might be expected from a $4 billion loan program over 10 years, would get Virginia’s spending back up to its 20-year average.

“What $400 million a year would do would bring a kind of parity,” Filardo said.

Stanley, R-Franklin County, said the problems demand a larger investment.

“You can’t spread $80 million around to our inner cities and Hampton Roads and our rural areas and expect any meaningful modernization to take place,” he said.

Stanley’s proposal hinges on dedicating half of new sales tax revenue from online purchases to school construction, instead of spending it all on transportation. He’s estimated that could raise enough to issue between $3 billion and $4 billion in bonds, an amount Northam disputed this week.

The size of Stanley’s proposal has detractors on both sides.

“Everybody’s got their hand out, and every legislator has a better idea for how it should be spent,” he said.

But fixing the problem piecemeal won’t work, Stanley said.

“We’re creating a disparity, where because of your ZIP code you’re not entitled … to the same education as a kid from Loudoun County,” he said. “You’re not getting the same educational opportunity. It’s been making me lose a lot of sleep lately. It’s not fair.”