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Pittsylvania County’s once-in-a-generation high school renovations won’t cost as much as first thought. The $70 million project will actually cost $64.3 million.
So what will happen to the remaining $5.7 million?
Should it be used to help pay down the remainder of the previously approved bond projects? Or should the money — the result of the county’s typical thrift and these tight times — be used for special projects at the four high schools?
Taxpayers frustrated by any increase in the cost of government at every level will want the money used to pay down in the bonds. Parents of the county’s school children will want to hear more about those proposed projects because their kids will benefit from what’s on the schools’ wish lists. Many county residents will fall into both categories.
The Pittsylvania County School Board will hear how the four high schools want to spend the extra money at the board’s July 14 meeting.
“We just want to provide for them … options to consider,” Superintendent James McDaniel said.
What are some of those options?
The four high schools want to spend the $5.7 million to upgrade their athletic facilities. The requests — which range from $1.07 million at Tunstall to $1.9 million at Chatham — will go for things like new lights, bleachers, concession stands, scoreboards, additional practice fields, new athletic buildings and fences.
High school sports programs certainly have value. If they didn’t, then the county could save a whole lot more money by simply telling the Trojans, Wildcats, Cavaliers and Hawks to hang up their cleats and be done with it. But that’s not going to happen.
Since high school sports programs are such integral parts of both the our public schools and their communities, they ought to have proper facilities. Since the county’s government is usually unwilling to spend money for even voter-approved projects such as the high school bonds, this is a rare and fleeting chance for these high schools to upgrade their facilities.
The county’s four high schools have a strong case for spending the leftover bond money to upgrade their schools’ athletic facilities.
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Reader Reactions
What should be done with the extra $5.7 million? I’ve got an idea…how about educate the kids. I don’t mean that sports do not have a place, but do all kids participate in these sports? All kids do participate in the classroom I believe.
The U.S. government spends 5k-7k per student per year on average yet we are near the bottom in results compared to other industrialized nations. The status quo for fixing and improving our educational system is to throw more money at the problem. If money can help improve test scores and results, how come on average homeschoolers can spend about $300-$800 and have standardized test scores 30 percentile points higher than government students scores?
When it comes to “education” could government could be the problem?
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