School starts Aug. 12 for Jackson County Public School students, and throughout the county, district faculty staff are busy sprucing up their campuses for the next batch of learners to walk through their doors.
For educators across the country, now is crunch time. Painters are adding the final touches to new murals in school hallways. Custodians are applying fresh coats of wax to the floors. Teachers are stapling new posters to their bulletin boards. It’s also the time of year when educators notice that a fresh coat of paint can only do so much.
With the prospect of a $105 school bond on the ballot this November, faculty, staff and administrators at JCPS are hoping there will be funds to address needs beyond the cosmetic across the district’s schools.
“This whole area would be such a wonderful space if it could just get renovated,” said Smoky Mountain High School Principal Joey Robinson inside the high school’s old gym. The bathrooms in the building have not been updated in decades, and Robinson said the men’s room was so badly run down, few students elected to use it.
As it stands, Jackson County has allocated $2.6 million to SMH for facilities upgrades — the bond would add $8 million to the budget to complete a list of projects JCPS says they need to be addressed now.
One of the school’s biggest needs is renovations to its stadium. To add a ramp that is Americans with Disabilities Act compliant to the stadium, Jackson County Public Schools Superintendent Dana Ayers said the estimated cost is $3 million
“It doesn’t seem like it should be that extraordinary, but building costs are very high, and we recognize that,” Ayers said. “But that, to me, is not a want. That is a need.”
Making sure the stadium is accessible is essential to students and the community, Robinson said, and the current stadium is not ADA compliant.
Additionally, as the new semester approaches, soon the SMH fieldhouse will be overstuffed, Robinson said, and logistics become challenging when there is not enough room to accommodate players, coaches, visiting teams and officials. It’s also a safety issue.
Just down the road at Cullowhee Valley School, Ayers was thrilled to see new windows, a project that did not need bond funding to complete. The windows had risen to the top of the district’s list of needed repairs, and the old windows were so warped they couldn’t properly shut. Not only did this present a safety issue, but it also presented a problem when it came to climate control and the occasional unwanted critter.
The new windows are sleek and now safe. But with this project ticked off the list, the district will move on to the next greatest need — often an issue that poses the greatest health and safety risk — while less urgent improvements are kicked down the road.
For example, Cullowhee Valley School Principal Melanie Jacobs would love to add an ADA compliant bathroom to the school. The current bathrooms are outdated, one student in a wheelchair uses the staff bathroom. The fence separating the school from the adjacent Cullowhee Rec Center also needs repairing, as do drainage issues in the parking lot.
“But we have to take turns,” Jacobs said. “It’s been a need for many years, people’s roofs are more important than our fence, so we have to take turns.”
The growing list of deferred maintenance projects isn’t unique to Jackson County Public Schools. In the last N.C. Public School Facility Needs Survey , the N.C. Department of Public Instruction identified nearly $12.8 billion in needs for the state’s 115 school districts in 2021. Adjusted for inflation, that number has risen to nearly $16 billion, and with construction costs showing no sign of dropping soon, Ayers is adamant that the cheapest time to address these needs is now. With the over $18 million in the proposed bond allocation numbers reserved for general needs and remodels, Ayers hopes to tackle those deferred maintenance needs.
In Cashiers, Blue Ridge School stands to gain the most funding from the bond at $23.8 million (not including the proposed Smoky Mountain Middle School) of all the county’s existing public schools. The $15 million currently allocated to BRS from the county budget is not enough, Ayers said. The two most urgent needs at the school are remodeling the gym and adding a new cafeteria, the projected costs of which are already threatening to exceed that $15 million amount.
In the current space, lunchtime presents a challenge for BRS faculty and staff. The school’s kitchen is in the hallway next to the gymnasium. During lunch, students from pre-K to sixth grade line up on one side of the hallway to wait their turn. On the other side of the hallway, they grab their hot food, and in the middle, P.E. students and students who’ve made it through the line filter through back and forth.
Ayers said it is not up to code, and Blue Ridge Early College Principal Nathan Frizzell said it’s not uncommon to see one or two of the youngest students drop their tray of food on their way to the lunch tables every day.
Additionally, the capacity at the BRS gym is maxed out. Frizzell said the gym is in constant use during the school day with P.E. classes, which leaves no large common space for things like assemblies or school meetings. During game days and graduations, there is not enough room for spectators, nor is there much in the way of ADA accommodations.
More than those immediate needs, however, BRS wants to build a performing arts auditorium and new classroom space, two items that are looking increasingly like a pipe dream without the bond passing.
Finally, Ayers is adamant that JCPS staff need a new bus garage.
“Having the extra space to get some of our newer busses in here to work on is a great need for us,” Josh Francis, JCPS Director of Transportation said.
When the bus garage was built in the 1950s, busses were much shorter. The average school bus fit 66 passengers and was about 39 feet long. Today’s busses are quite a bit longer and taller, Francis said. The current bus garage is too small for staff to work on more than one bus at a time, meaning mechanics have to take much of their work outside in the elements. The current bus garage also has a leak in the roof. If the bond doesn’t pass, Ayers said JCPS will have to find funding somewhere to fix the leaking roof, which will kick the can for the new building down the road indefinitely.
With a new building, Francis said his staff could work on more busses at a time, significantly improving productivity. Additionally, he said he would like to see his staff get a break room with air conditioning and room for the bus driver training classes all bus drivers must complete.
If the bond passes, Jackson County would raise property taxes by 4.86% to pay the principal and interest. The maximum aggregate principal amount of the bond be $105 million, while the total amount of interest paid on the bond would not exceed $35,647,256.
Jackson County Commissioners will vote whether to authorize the bond referendum following a public hearing at their Sept. 1 meeting. JCPS and Jackson County Commissioners urge the public to provide comment.