File Photo
The Board of Supervisors continues to seek a resolution to the county’s elementary school construction woes by adding on to all three schools, including an addition to Goochland Elementary School that could look something like this in the near future.

Supervisors take no action on school requests
BY BRAD FRANKLIN

Apr 16, 2008

School system had asked for bus garage, BES and RES funds

In the ongoing issue over school construction in Goochland County, the Board of Supervisors and School Board again aired their differences this week.

All five representatives of the School Board attended the meeting Monday afternoon to ask for funds for both the planned bus garage and the additions to Byrd and Randolph Elementary schools.

Though there was much debate on the topic, the supervisors took no action and asked School Board Chairman Andrew Meng to come by with the requests once more information on a potential addition to Goochland Elementary School was gathered.

The School Board had asked for $4,193,268 for the school bus garage and $8,728,236 for the additions to BES and RES. The funding comes from the recently-approved Capital Improvements Program (CIP) and includes both design and construction costs.

Meng and fellow School Board members Jim Haskell (District 1), Ivan Mattox (District 3), and Raymond Miller (District 2) all addressed the Board of Supervisors during the nearly two-hour discussion.

The issue continues to center on what will be done with GES and the two boards have very different views. The School Board would like to see a new school built on Bulldog Way while the supervisors continue to say they’d approve funding for additions to all three now.

While the school representatives continued to make the point that all options include the bus garage and BES and RES improvements, the supervisors voiced concern over doing the project on a “piece meal” basis.

District 5 Supervisor Jim Eads said the course of action on GES, be it if a new school or addition was part of the plan, would have a profound impact on the whole process.

District 1’s Andrew Pryor said he supported the projects that the school system was asking for but couldn’t support a new school or using GES for anything other than education.

“A school is a school,” he said. “I don’t care what you do with it. It’s a school.”

Eads added later, “For us to go forward without thinking about what we’re doing is foolish.”

The School Board, meanwhile, made its case on the merits of the requests and the need for action.

Haskell, at one point, expressed his and the school system’s desire to have time to find out from an engineering and architectural standpoint if the talked about additions to GES—which include classrooms and changes to the media center and an added multi-purpose room—could even work. In the meantime, the School Board, he said, needed to “get roofs over kids’ heads.”

He also presented the BES and RES projects as not only being needed for those respective schools and students but also for the county as a whole.

When the supervisors continued to speak of their support for the projects without a vote, Miller said, “I think it’s amazing how much agreement we have here but we have not been able to verbalize our agreement.”

Later, when Miller disagreed with his assertion that the desired course of action was piece meal, Eads said he couldn’t support the projects the way they were being approached because he needed the entire picture.

“I want to see the whole baby,” he added. 

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