Strong public comments in favor, including from a mother of a special needs child who struggles to get around Franklin High School, buoyed a sense of moving forward with the new Franklin High School project during a joint meeting of the Macon County Board of Commissioners and Board of Education on Wednesday, Dec. 21.
LS3P Vice President Paul Boney said his estimator will bring a more accurate cost for the FHS project in late January. Currently the project is slated to cost around $118 million. The more accurate estimate will be presented before the commissioners’ 2022-23 budget process starts in February and the hope is to have another joint commissioner/school board meeting around that time.
Boney said “if everything goes right,” then work could begin in Fall 2023, starting with the FHS athletics facilities. Boney did warn that often, not everything goes 100% right.
No formal actions were approved by the board during the 3 1/2-hour meeting, aside from the adjournment vote. The meeting was more for the new board members to learn about and continue dialogue about school improvement projects.
Board Chair Paul Higdon started the meeting trying to stress being positive, but also saying certain things needed to be done.
“This could be fun, the sky’s the limit if we work together,” Higdon said in his introduction.
Higdon wanted to take the 15-person Franklin High facilities committee and narrow it down to five or six members, saying the county needed to limit its contact with Boney and stressed his belief in having a defined structure of people working together. Many of the public comments opposed getting rid of the 15-person committee, but Boney spoke in favor of a streamlined committee.
During the introductions, Commissioner Gary Shields talked about how as former FHS principal for 21 years and school board member, he’s all for a new high school for the betterment of the kids. In response, Higdon said the Middle School track is the only “emergency” he sees.
Shields said FHS is an ADA/IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) liability due to its inaccessibility to people with special needs.
“Franklin High School cannot be as it is right now,” Shields said, saying someone could sue Macon County Schools anytime over accessibility issues. Shields later said everyone watching was now “implicated” in knowing the accessibility issues at FHS.
Higdon asked Shields how much he did to alleviate accessibility issues in his time as principal. Shields responded that he did what he could.
Commissioner Danny Antoine said he did a recent walk-through of the school and said it was “eye opening,” but stressed he wanted to be a good steward of people’s money.
“I am for a new high school, I’m just not for wasteful spending. I’m not for reckless spending,” Antoine stated.
Commissioner John Shearl said he was expecting to see “floors crumbling and walls cracked” during the walk-through at FHS and that the track was the worst thing he saw.
Shearl later said the county’s fund balance being 70% of the budget is “political suicide,” according to conversations he had with the UNC School of Government. That could give the county the option to pay for a portion of the project with the fund balance. The Local Government Commission advises that a municipal government has a fund balance of 20% of their budget.
Commissioner Josh Young said multiple times there are more than 20 different departments in Macon County and that there needs to be prioritization of projects.
School Board member Hilary Wilkes said renovating schools is as much an economic development issue as much as an education issue, noting that Macon County has the third-lowest property tax rate out of North Carolina’s 100 counties. That plays a potentially negative role when applying for lottery funds, Wilkes stated.
MCS is again going to apply for up to the $50 million maximum in state lottery funds for a new high school. The school system will find out the results in May 2023.
Public comments
Before the public comments started, Higdon requested it be moved to the end of the meeting. But Boney and School Board Chairman Jim Breedlove wanted to hear what the public said, and Higdon relented. Seven people signed up to speak, all about FHS.
Macon Middle School Principal Mark Sutton said that if he was 55, the average age of a Macon County resident, and had no kids, he’d vote “no” on a sales tax increase; talking about the failed November ballot referendum that would have raised the sales tax a quarter of a percent to help fund part of the FHS project.
Sutton spoke about how his cancer-stricken wife can’t climb the football bleachers without help. Sutton added that the oldest people sit front row at basketball games because they can’t climb the bleachers, and thus are in danger when players dive after a ball.
“Ruby Cinema is more ADA compliant than Franklin High School,” Sutton said, adding that there are “for sale” signs on the properties around FHS that could be home to some facilities or storing dirt.
John deVille said he knows people who are for raising the property tax, since it’s a progressive tax, rather than raising a regressive tax such as the sales tax. deVille, who is a FHS teacher, said the HVAC at the school sometimes goes from feeling like a sauna to a meat locker.
deVille and others spoke in favor of Shields remaining the school board liaison, saying there’s a rumor that he’s not being considered. Later, Shearl said he’s not heard that rumor, but did say a new set of eyes and new ideas could be a good thing.
After deVille spoke, Higdon said any board member can respond to public comment. Shearl said FHS has no structural issues, and that although several rooms are substandard, he is against a total replacement.
“My wife wants a new kitchen, but I’m not going to tear my house down for that,” Shearl said.
Heather Dombroskie stated there’s a lot of “loud opinions from people who’ve never set foot in any [Macon County] school” and took issue with Higdon saying FHS’s current state isn’t an emergency.
“Why wait until it’s an emergency,” Dombroskie asked. She added that she believes sales tax voters were “uninformed” and that it’s time for Macon County to start supporting itself and wants to raise property taxes “a little bit.”
Higdon responded to Dombromskie, saying that 99% of the debt that Macon County carries is school related and that the county has one of the higher per-capita tax bases in North Carolina.
John Mira-Knippel, chair of the Angel Medical Center board of directors and a business owner, said when he’s recruiting for businesses, people wonder why Franklin High looks the way it does and want other high school options for their kids. Mira-Knippel said he ends up recommending new employees enroll their kids at Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School across the border in Georgia.
Melissa Fuetz talked about her son Patrick, who has cerebral palsy. Fuetz said one of her family’s hardest decisions was to enroll Patrick at FHS due to how inaccessible the property is. Fuetz said her family tried to get Patrick to enroll at the more accessible Macon Early College, but Patrick wanted to go to the same school as his older brother and dad.
Fuetz chronicled Patrick’s daily routine of getting from class to class, which can take 15 minutes at points, which means he misses instructional time.
“Manageable is not the same as equal treatment,” Fuetz stated.
Fuetz said that her family has reached out to disability rights advocates to try to get MCS to reach legal compliance with ADA/IDEA accessibility laws.
Antoine said Patrick was on his mind when touring FHS and that he has a personal problem with the accessibility issues Patrick faces. Antoine said for him, FHS’s current state is an emergency.
Shields said the reason these ADA issues haven’t been dealt with for 25 years was because of the continuing promises of a new high school being built. Shields then told a story of when they were honoring a 98-year-old World War II veteran in the fine arts center, and there wasn’t an accessible bathroom for him, and the veteran opted just to “hold it in” until later.
Danny Prince quoted George Washington and simply said the commissioners need to come up with a policy that glorifies God.
Richard Lightner spoke on his interpretation of the tax rate as a retired tax office employee, saying being the sixth highest per-capita tax base in the state is misleading because it doesn’t count property owners who are residents of a different state, which he said is roughly half of all county property owners. Lightner addressed the inaccessibility of the school.
“If I was the parent of a disabled kid, I would call an ADA lawyer tomorrow,” Lightner stated.
Lightner said that in the last decade-plus, education funding has gone from 24% of the county budget to 19% while public safety has gone up.
“We’ve lived through three to four generations of kids going to a bad school,” Lightner stated. “Are we going to go through one to two more?”
Higdon questioned Lightner on the tax revenue base. Shearl defended the per capita tax base rankings, saying those numbers were confirmed by the UNC School of Government.
Other priority projects
As discussion moved on to other school projects, Higdon’s effort to stop the architectural services at Highlands Pre-K failed after no one seconded the vote.
Higdon made a motion to direct the school board to re-prioritize Highlands Pre-K, Macon Middle track and Highlands soccer field and bring that back to the commissioners during budget season. No one seconded and the motion died. Shearl said he had a problem with voting because he didn’t want to undo the Highlands Pre-K architectural services contract approved by a previous board.
Higdon said none of the three projects had any funding mechanisms in place for construction. The Highlands Pre-K architecture services contract was approved Nov. 8 with LS3P for $329,255. The Macon Middle track and Highlands soccer field were authorized for bids on Oct. 18. Those bids will be opened in January.
Higdon said the October joint meeting “seemed like a shopping spree” with the school board wanting more projects funded than he thought. Higdon repeated multiple times that the three projects do not have a funding mechanism.
Higdon, Shearl and Young asked the school board to prioritize the Highlands Pre-K, Macon Middle track and Highlands soccer field projects in order. Wilkes responded that those three projects, along with the FHS rebuild, Macon Middle locker room and Highlands Middle renovations, were the six projects the school board prioritized earlier this year.
Young said they should pause the Highlands Pre-K project if they have no idea how to get the estimated $4.7 million for it.
Wilkes said the Highlands Pre-K project should be named differently because it encompasses more than just Pre-K and that it was on the school board’s priority list from February. That list was given to the commissioners in March.
County Manager Derek Roland said when Higdon previously said in October that the Highlands Pre-K wasn’t a priority, Higdon was referring to the capital improvement plan submitted in January.
Wilkes said there have been children hurt at the Highlands soccer field and that the issues there have been maintained for years by parents, but now it’s getting worse.
Shearl questioned the estimated $840,050 for the Highlands soccer field, saying it cost $250,000 to build originally. Wilkes said the solution is a turf field and to take care of drainage issues; the hope is to make the repairs in the summer. Shearl noted that soccer in Highlands is as important as football is to Franklin.
Breedlove and others said the Macon Middle track is stripped down and while regulation size, unlike Franklin High’s track, it can’t host events as it doesn’t have the field equipment. School Superintendent Chris Baldwin said the pole vault, long jump and high jump equipment could be moved for as much as $10,000.
Shearl questioned having two regulation-sized tracks two miles apart, asking for ways to cut the costs. Baldwin said both tracks are used by PE classes and the community and that re-doing both tracks would ensure they would be used more.
It was suggested leftover funds from recently completed projects could be used on the Macon Middle School track project, specifically.
Breedlove said near the end of the meeting that the school board has done good listening to the community about what they want in terms of capital projects and the ones presented are of priority.