Board member Dr. John Crooks, who represents Wheeler, is asking his fellow board members to fully fund a project that would help bring the 46-year-old school up to district space standards, eliminate trailers and build a two-story, 14-classroom wing on the school that includes a new auxiliary gym.
At the board's Aug. 11 meeting, members were presented with a fly-by video of the architectural plans for Wheeler, the same video that was presented to Wheeler parents back in May by SPLOST manager Doug Shepard. Following the May presentation, Shepard immediately told the parents that the district simply does not have the funding to support a $20 million project for Wheeler.
Since then, parents have been lobbying the school board to fund the renovations, a project that has been promised to the Wheeler community since SPLOST II. The problem for the school board has been to find enough money to legally fund the project.
According to the board's agenda, Crooks has proposed the district use $9.5 million in the undesignated SPLOST III fund, on top of $9.6 million that was already set aside in SPLOST III for Wheeler. An additional $1.1 million would come from Georgia Department of Education's capital outlay fund, but would require approval from the state DOE.
Although Crooks claims this plan would be a legal use of SPLOST III dollars, the district could face some issues since the $20 million Wheeler project was not specifically laid out in the SPLOST III notebook.
Also on the agenda for Thursday night is a proposal to expand the seating for a theater project at Lassiter High School. School board member David Banks, who represents Lassiter, asked the board to consider adding 250 seats to a new theatre at Lassiter. Changing the scope of the project from a 750-seat theater to a 1,000-seat theater would tack on slightly less than $1 million to the construction cost of the project, making it $13 million, instead of $12.1, which still falls under the project's $16.2 million budget. At those cost estimates, a 750-seat theater would be $16,133 per seat, while a 1,000-seat theater would cost less per seat at $13,000.
Missing from the agenda, once again, is a vote from the board on whether or not to reimburse Crooks for the $41,000 in legal fees he incurred during the unsuccessful attempt to recall him.
Board Chairwoman Lynnda Crowder-Eagle said via email on Tuesday that the board is still waiting for information it requested from its legal team at Brock, Clay, Calhoun and Rogers, to put the item on the agenda.
A heated debate among board members regarding the reimbursement occurred at the July 22 meeting.
The board eventually voted 5-1, with David Banks dissenting, to table the decision for reimbursement and seek legal advice from Brock Clay on whether there were previous rulings involving such situations.
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My kids - future students of Lassiter- can stand too! Hire a teacher!!!!!!
$13,000 theater seats!! My kids can stand, - HIRE A TEACHER!
It will be good practice for the future.
Let's see. . . is it fundamentally fair to let the richest school in the county have a $900,000 addition to a theatre when other schools have to maintian trailer parks just to gove their kids a place to learn?
Take a page from the Fred Sanderson Playbook: Put Corporate Logos On Everything So That Private Money Pays For School Improvements. It Sves Money and Brings Dignity to Education.
On the same night, Banks voted to end the career of a teacher when many of us parents had called Banks to say that this teacher had been unfairly evaluated and that our children had been extremely successful in his class. It is my understanding, from other parents and blog comments, that this teacher missed turning in one lesson plan.
So my question is, why isn't Banks being recalled? Or maybe that is WHY he voted to reimburse Crooks the legal defense money, because Banks knows he is next.
I do look at the whole picture, and having spent time in a school building or two, we are faced with so many funding issues that I get upset when we can short change our students on a regular basis, yet we won't look at controlling where we are spending these monies. I do realize that SPLOST is for specific capital expenditures..but I also see that the "system" is being manipulated to fund other things. THAT is where I take exception.
We deserve better than this.
I do question the need of the Lassiter auditorium project being expanded, even if the cost is going up by "only" a million dollars or so. How often do these auditoriums get used and how often are they filled to capacity? How does their use increase the academic success of our students? Why the love affair with non-classroom building projects?
Can't do it, then......