LUMBERTON — School board members remain unsure when they will vote on a school consolidation plan, but several seem to welcome the opportunity to discuss it as a board on Tuesday.
Nearly half of the members of the Public Schools of Robeson County’s Board of Education have said they wouldn’t be ready to vote on a plan that would shutter 30 schools in favor of building 14 new schools until they could discuss it as a group.
The board will have that chance at a special meeting on Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the Public Schools of Robeson County’s Central Office.
“As far as our board, we have not sat down and discussed it and I think that’s what we’re going to be doing Tuesday night,” Steve Martin said. “We’ve needed a conversation, but what will come out of it, I don’t have a clue. But I cannot vote anything but a ‘no’ until we sit down and discuss it and see if we even want a plan.”
Martin said the board has yet to meet independently on the consolidation plan since it was presented on April 5. Each meeting on the consolidation has been a public, joint meeting with the Robeson County commissioners. The commissioners voted in favor of entering into a pre-development agreement with sfL+a Architects, the firm that presented the plan, during their Monday meeting.
The pre-agreement still needs approval from the school board before it’s official. If both boards sign on, sfL+a can proceed with a demographics study that would help determine where schools would be located.
The $1.4 billion consolidation plan would shut down 30 elementary and middle schools in favor of building 14 new schools, 13 K-8 schools and a career and technical high school. Five existing elementary and middle schools would be renovated and converted to K-8 schools, although the costs for those renovations are not in the consolidation budget.
The K-8 schools, according to Robbie Ferris, CEO of sfL+a Architects, would feature a common entrance with separate wings for children in different grades. Common areas like the gyms, libraries and cafeterias would be used by different age groups at different times. The energy-efficient buildings would zero out the cost of the county’s power bill, which would help the school system pay the $1.4 billion over a 40-year, lease-purchase agreement.
The cost for land is also not included in the consolidation plan. Ferris said sfL+a Architects would lease the land from the county.
Board members said they want to know what is and is not included in sfL+a’s projections. As an example, Martin said in his copy of the plan, it says some athletic equipment would be covered, so Martin wants to know what is meant by “some.”
Randy Lawson, who has also said he wanted to meet with his board to discuss the consolidation, would not give specifics, but said he has concerns he will discuss at the meeting.
“All we know at this point is it is a specially-called meeting,” he said.
Dwayne Smith said the meeting is coming at an opportune time as he believes the school board needs to do some revising on the plan. Smith suggested that more than one architecture firm be consulted.
“We know what we’ve got,” he said. “But we’ve got to do some revising on this, and that 554 bill has to pass. We’ve got to stop trying to rush this and we’ve got to stop putting the horse before the cart.”
Smith was referring to legislation in the General Assembly that must be approved that would allow state funding to be used in a lease-purchase agreement. It is unlikely the consolidation plan could proceed without state money being included in the payments.
