The Charlottesville School Board is currently discussing renovations that need to be carried out on many of the city’s school buildings and infrastructure as many schools across the city are in need of maintenance work due to their age. Planned construction, which may cost millions in the coming years, will lead to major changes in the education system, including the number of school transitions students make.
These major renovations include HVAC system overhauls, roof replacements and potential new construction. Charlottesville School Board Chair Emily Dooley said that in ongoing conversations, the School Board has discussed with the Charlottesville City Council about deferred maintenance in many schools that will soon be due and other immediate concerns that need to be addressed.
“Prior to this construction [at the middle school], the last [school] building that the city built was in 1974 … so our buildings are old,” Dooley said. “Not to say that they haven’t been touched since 1974, but really it’s been a focus on quick hits and infusions of money that can happen over the summer.”
In an interview with The Cavalier Daily, Charlottesville City Council member Michael Payne also spoke about some of these necessary renovations that were discussed at the joint-work session and said that more major renovations such as HVAC replacements could not be completed over the summer as has been done in the past with other repairs.
“The takeaway was all of the school buildings in the system, within the next five to ten years, really need much more extensive modernization beyond these smaller band-aids or fixes you could just do over the summer,” Payne said.
The School Board joined the City Council Aug. 4 for a joint work session to discuss these ongoing and future renovations and updates. During the meeting, the two organizations discussed anticipated repairs at each school, their costs and logistics of these renovations, among other topics.
In order to do this, Payne spoke about the possibility of having a central location, or alternative school, where students of each school could relocate to when it came time for their school to undergo renovation.
Payne said that although these renovations and construction do not directly address large issues facing the school system, such as gaps in both achievement and literacy, it is still good for students and staff to be in modernized learning spaces and that the renovations may indirectly impact these other areas.
“It’s still a very good thing to have the best quality buildings that you can, as well as … provide more spaces for specialized instruction or small group tutoring and things like that,” Payne said.
One major ongoing renovation is of Charlottesville Middle School, where the city is constructing a large addition in order to house sixth graders, along with the seventh and eighth graders which already attend the school. Currently, Charlottesville students attend local elementary schools from preschool until fourth grade, and then transition to the Walker Upper Elementary School for fifth and sixth grade.
After this, students move to Charlottesville Middle School for seventh and eighth grade before ultimately transitioning to Charlottesville High School for grades nine through 12. Dooley said that this was historically done in order to integrate Charlottesville students and avoid having two middle schools, but that the number of transitions is not good for a host of reasons.
Beginning in August of next year, Charlottesville fifth graders will remain in their elementary schools, while sixth graders will move to Charlottesville Middle School with the completion of the renovation at that site. Preschoolers will also be pulled out of Charlottesville elementary schools in order to accommodate the additional fifth graders.
Dooley said that the site where Walker Upper Elementary School currently sits will be a large focus for the school board going forward. She said that this could potentially become a new preschool site, but that it depended on the Board of Visitors’ decision on whether to lease the Oak Lawn property to the city’s schools.
“If that comes to fruition, then there’s a whole cascading effect there of what could be possible on that site,” Dooley said. “If we can take advantage of the space at Oak Lawn then it opens up what we were intending to house at the Walker site.”
The Board’s Finance Committee did decide to lease the Oak Lawn property to Charlottesville City Schools at their September meeting. The school board can now potentially house a preschool learning center at the Oak Lawn site, which leaves the Walker site open to house alternative infrastructure.
Dooley said that all of the renovations alone totaled to an estimated $100 million. According to Dooley, these funds are controlled by the City Council and were a point of discussion at the August joint-work session. Because the city’s primary generation of revenue is through property taxes, Dooley spoke about the potential of increasing property taxes, but said that this would have impacts on Charlottesville residents, such as some households not being able to afford a property tax hike.
Though Grounds is mostly located in Albemarle County, some parts are located within the city. Dooley spoke about the limitations of the University’s presence in Charlottesville, because it is exempt from paying property taxes to the city.
“Another issue that we run into is that the University does not pay property taxes on its buildings within Charlottesville,” Dooley said. “That’s a pretty significant amount of real estate that is exempt from paying property taxes that the city misses out on and that doesn’t go to fund the schools.”
Payne said that looking forward, a hope is that the next General Assembly session, beginning in January, will bring about new ways for the city to generate revenue that can be funneled towards the school system and school repairs.
“One of the hopes is that the next General Assembly session, hopefully we finally will be able to have legislation passed that allows us to, though a referendum, do a sales tax that has that revenue go just to school construction,” Payne said. “Or the General Assembly will pass more money statewide for school funding and school repairs.”
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