LEDGER — Mitchell County Schools Superintendent Chad Calhoun wants to set the record straight on why the school system is pursuing a new school facility.
“There’s a lot of misinformation that has got out there about the school, but a lot of people know that we’ve been discussing the new school going on five years,” Calhoun said. “This is not a new thing. This is not a sudden thing.”
At the Mitchell County Board of Education’s regular session on Thursday, Nov. 20, instead of his usual brief update Calhoun usually gives regarding the project, he chose to address some of the rumors by explaining the history of the decision process and why he believes a new school is required.
Calhoun noted conversations regarding the construction of a new school began after they received an estimated cost to repair each of the current schools five years ago when the “bottom fell out” of Gouge Elementary in 2015.
“We were having school one day and all of a sudden this odor started coming up into the school,” he said. “The main section of pipe collapsed and around 8,000 gallons of sewage spilled out immediately under Gouge and we had to close school.”
According to Calhoun, when Gouge and three of the other schools in the county were built several decades ago, they were created with dirt tunnels, not concrete, and old, iron pipes. He noted this makes it extremely difficult to repair because the dirt had collapsed, making it nearly impossible for even a smaller than average person to fit into the tunnels.
Calhoun said they had to call Roto Rooter in Asheville who had a man “very small in stature” who could fit in the tunnels and spent three days, in 30-minute intervals, repairing a section of the pipe.
“That’s what it took to repair that section,” he said. “Not the whole thing, that section...We didn’t know that was going to happen. You can’t predict when that’s going to happen. It might happen tomorrow, it might happen 20 years from now...You don’t know your weak spots until something happens.”
Another reason Calhoun feels a new school is needed is the consistent drop in enrollment. According to the Superintendent, in 1985, they had nearly 3,000 students enrolled. This year, they have 1,765 students.
Based on the trends, Calhoun said in eight years, they will have fewer than 1,400 students, which will drastically affect funding and lead to cuts.
“We get $9,000, federal and state funds, per student,” he said. “If we drop down to 1,400, look how much less money that will be...We’ve already cut and we’ve cut and we’ve cut and we’ve cut. You can’t cut anymore. You can’t have just one person working the lunchroom, cooking, serving and taking up money. It doesn’t work that way. Those people still have to be there. Something has to be done.”
Currently, the school has a $15 million grant from lottery money, which can only be used on new construction, not for repairs. They also intend to borrow $7 million of current sales tax money, which would cause no increase to taxpayers.
Additionally, two years ago, the state approved $10.5 million in lottery money to go to Mitchell County, which would put the total amount of funding at $32.5 million.
However, Calhoun said with the cost increase of materials due to the ongoing pandemic, the price per square foot to construct a new school increased from below $200 to $235, which has increased the total estimated cost of construction to approximately $38 million.
“It’s never been approached to the commissioners about the price of the school or the cost of the school or a plan laid out,” Calhoun said. “A thing came up, I think at a commissioners meeting, about $38 million. Yeah, we’ve got it figured at $38 million. But, did we present that at the commissioners? No. Because we wouldn’t present something we couldn’t afford to them.”
He added the school is currently seeking more grants and lobbying legislators for more lottery money in order to fund the new estimated cost of the school in order to keep taxpayers from funding it down the road.
“If we can get more grant money or lottery money to pay for this school, instead of putting it on taxpayers, that’s what we need to do and that’s what we’re working on,” Calhoun said.
However, Calhoun noted, if the school system does not take advantage of grants and lottery money, they might have to raise taxes if something goes wrong in the future.
“Something’s going to happen sometime in the future that’s going to cost the community some amount of money,” he said. “I would much rather have the community, the commissioners, the legislators behind these grants and lottery funds to build the school than have the taxpayers pay it down the line.”
In his conclusion, the Superintendent said this was a need, not a want, for the children of Mitchell County.
“I think we need to remind ourselves why we’re looking at this new school,” he said. “It’s not like we just woke up one day and thought ‘Gosh, we want a new school!’ There’s a lot that we want, but we need a new school...Our kids deserve it. Our kids are our most important resources, so let’s make it happen.”