By Erin Smith
The Bladen County Board of Commissioners met on Monday night and heard a presentation from Bladen County Schools Superintendent Dr. Robert Taylor regarding proposed school construction and consolidation plans.
Dr. Taylor told the Board of Commissioners the Bladen County Board of Education has been studying the issue for some time now of how best to handle declining enrollment numbers and how to handle aging school facilities which are in need of repairs and upgrades and recruitment of teachers. Dr. Taylor said the school district has worked hard trying to maintain the aging, crumbling buildings but some of the schools simply need to be closed.
Dr. Taylor told the board the county has several schools which were built in the 1940s and Tar Heel Middle which was built in the early 1900s and is approaching 100 years old. He added that the two high schools, East Bladen and West Bladen High Schools were constructed in 2001 and opened to students in 2003.
Dr. Taylor said the enrollment in Bladen County Schools is declining. As of Monday, he told the Commissioners the enrollment is 4,280 students in grades K-12 and 216 students are enrolled in Pre-K. He anticipates enrollment dropping over the next five years to 4,100 students by the year 2022.
Dr. Taylor also noted there are an additional 1,700 students residing in Bladen County not attending school in the county’s public schools system; only half of those students are accounted for in other schools in Bladen or surrounding counties.
Dr. Taylor told the Commissioners the Bladen County Board of Education conducted a series of four community meetings in May 2017 discussing plans for a potential consolidation of schools.
Dr. Taylor proceeded to present two different construction and consolidation plans to the Bladen County Board of Commissioners on Monday night. The first plan called for a new K-8 school to be constructed in Tar Heel and for the closure of Booker T. Washington School in Clarkton and Plain View Elementary School in Tar Heel. He said this plan does have community support.
“Based on feedback, this plan does allow us to leave schools open in towns,” said Dr. Taylor.
The second plan, which has school board support and was presented at the August 2017 Board of Education meeting(https://bladenonline.
The second plan also calls for the closure of Booker T. Washington, Clarkton School of Discovery and East Arcadia Schools. These three schools would be consolidated into a new K-8 school which is proposed to be constructed somewhere in the Council area.
Dr. Taylor told the Commissioners that the Board of Education believes the second plan will be able to meet both the short-term and long-term needs of the school district and would also generate a cost savings to the county.
He added a third option or Option C which is to implement an option suggested by the Bladen County Commissioners.
“The Statute does not allow us to tell you what to do so we won’t be doing Option C,” said Bladen County Commissioners Chairman Charles Ray Peterson.
Dr. Taylor said if the second plan is chosen, it could lead to as much as a $1 million cost savings to the county. He said the consolidation and construction plan is an opportunity for the school district to reduce its footprint in the county by going from 13 schools to 9 schools and it will address the issues the county faces with its aging school buildings.
He estimated the total costs to construct two new K-8 schools to be about $35 to $40 million plus an addition $9 million in add-ons per school. Dr. Taylor reminded the Commissioners that the rules and regulations regarding the construction of a public schools is different than those governing the construction of a Charter School.
Dr. Taylor said the State of North Carolina is making available $75 million in funds for capital projects including school construction and is gingival preference to Tier 1 and Tier 2 counties. He told the board the state will match local funds on a 3 to 1 match up to $15 million.
Dr. Taylor was questioned about the proposed locations for the two proposed schools. He replied that Tar Heel is central to the communities who currently transport their children to Plain View Elementary, Dublin Primary School, and Tar Heel Middle School. He also pointed out the same is true for Council. The Council area is centrally located to those transporting students to Clarkton School of Discovery, East Arcadia School and Booker T. Washington Primary.
No final decisions have been reached. Dr. Taylor told the board the longer the project remains on hold, the costs to construct the needed buildings could potentially increase.
The Commissioners agreed to meet and discuss the issue in workshops but no dates were announced.
Additional information:
The North Carolina General Assembly is also studying how best to finance the costs of badly needed school construction needs across the state. The legislature is mulling a $1.9 Billion School Bond plan which voters may get to decide on in November 2018, but those funds are just a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated school construction needs of $8 Billion throughout the state, according to NC Policy Watch.
The Bladen County Board of Education was presented a school consolidation study performed by the School Planning Section of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction in August 2016 which outlined the needs of the Bladen County Schools district for the future. You can read the study here https://bladencounty.org/wp-
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