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Growing pains: 20 more schools needed in next six years
Growth in the county may have slowed from breakneck to merely runaway, but growth it is and it brings families, families have children and the children need a place to go to school.Superintendent of Schools Edgar Hatrick predicts the school system will need to spend $1.3 billion over the next six years to keep pace with the growth.
The plan calls for the construction of 12 elementary schools, four middle schools and four high schools over the next six years.
The first year of the Superintendent's Recommended Capital Improvement Plan, for the spending year that starts July 1, 2008, calls for three elementary schools, one high school, and land for five future elementary schools. The price tag is $208.6 million.
The next year includes two elementary schools, one middle school, one high school, renovation of Catoctin Elementary School and addition of science labs and an art studio to Park View High School.
The price tag for a high school in 2008 is $99.6 million. By 2013, the schools' planners predict that same high school will cost $140 million.
The school system enrolls 54,047 students this year. The planners predict that nearly 77,000 students will report for school in September 2013.
This year's first- through fourth-graders (19,420) outnumber the ninth- through 12-graders (15,419) by nearly 4,000. If no one moved in before those elementary school children move on to high school, the county would need another two-and-a-half high schools.
Broad Run Supervisor Lori Waters sat in on the school Board meeting. She shook her head when Hatrick called for the two boards (supervisors and school) to work together to solve these financial problems.
No other fast-growing community, Hatrick pointed out, has been able to keep its tax rate as low as Loudoun has been able to. The tax rate in Fairfax at the height of its boom topped $1.50 per $100 of assessed value of real estate.
"We will have to look at the tax rate and the debt cap," Hatrick said. "This is a growth plan that matches the enrollment we see."
Hatrick assured Mark Nuzzaco (Catoctin) that no schools will be closed. The system will need every seat it has and more, he said.
The advanced technology academy is on the six-year plan for the spending year that starts July 1010. If the supervisors agree, and the voters approve funding, it could open in 2013. The plan puts it on the county-owned property in Ashburn that had been approved for the Islamic Saudi Academy.
Absent from the plan is a high school in Lovettsville. Newly-elected Catoctin school Board member Jennifer Bergel lobbied during her campaign, and before, for a high school in Lovettsville.
The plan does include the already-funded Woodgrove High School on the Fields Farm in Purcellville. The plan shows it opening in 2009. That plan has been placed in doubt by the Virginia Supreme Court's decision to hear multiple lawsuits involving that school site.
The School Board will hold a public hearing on the construction plan Nov. 27, 6:30 p.m. It will convene for work sessions Nov. 28 and 29, and is scheduled to adopt a plan on Jan. 8, 2008.
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