Sunday, February 19, 2012

The Seeds of Greed Never Die....

Geez I haven't seen this in print anywhere else.  Have you?

From the Beaufort Observer Online edition:

School facilities study documents overbuilding by more than $24 million

 

schools
February 07, 2012
The Beaufort County Commissioners got a sobering report from architect James Hite Monday night (2-6-12) at its regular monthly meeting. Hite and Associates were hired to do a school facilities survey. The tentative results presented Monday night showed that the schools are overbuilt by 2217 student seats or 27.8% in excess capacity.

You can review the number for each school by clicking here. (It's a large file, so please be patient).

Those numbers were computed by measuring every classroom in the system and applying State standards to compute the capacity of each school. The number of students was the count of students in membership (ADM) for the first month of school this year (2011). The difference between capacity and enrollment or ADM determined the number of available seats. All total that number added up to 2217.

The most overbuilt new school is S.W. Snowden which is only used 33% of its capacity. Washington High School is at 98% utilization, while Chocowinity Middle and Eastern are at 89% utilization. Northside is only used about 50%, as is Southside. Southside could clearly have accommodated the middle school students from Aurora, eliminating the need to add on to that campus when the old Snowden was closed, while using the buses that transport high school students from Aurora to Southside. Similarly, more students could have been assigned to Northside rather than PS Jones. That would have nearly eliminated the need for John Small and relieved crowding at Washington High School.
(break in article ....now continued)
 
For the "We told you so" file, the Beaufort Observer said in 2008:
The problem was created when Jeff Moss decided to just replace P. S. Jones, John Small and add space at Bath and Aurora without looking at the existing utilization, its condition and projected life, or how space could be used more efficiently (i.e., eliminate the duplication at Jones/Small or restructure the grade structure at Bath.) .....
Read the entire article at:

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why would you see this in print anywhere else?

Sheila said...

No need to answer that question. Especially to someone who won't identify themselves.

Anonymous said...

No, seriously. It's an unsigned editorial. What do you expect, other newspapers to just print the Beaufort Observer's work?

Sheila Barber said...

Of course not. That would be violating copyright laws. Even I don't give all of an article nor will I provide a link to a cached copy of the Herald's articles that don't need registrations.

Dang all I asked was a simple question.

Thanks for stopping by.

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