Schools

Aspiring Chairmen Address School Renovations

In their response to the fourth of six questions posed by Patch, the candidates for Chairman of the Board of Supervisors deliberate the school district's Capital Improvement Program.

The four candidates running for chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors answered six questions by email for Patch.  We will feature one question each day, with the unedited answers by each of the candidates.

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Independent (website, YouTube)

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Question #4 - The Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) school renovation Capital Improvement Program (CIP) budget currently receives nearly all funding from Fairfax County bonds.  FCPS Chief Operating Officer Dean Tistadt has repeatedly warned that current CIP funding levels are not sufficient. “The capital program annual spending limit of $155 million, established by the Board of Supervisors, is inadequate to meet the capital needs of the school system as shown in the School Board’s annual capital improvement program.  The lack of adequate funding means that many schools are not being renovated in a timely manner and too many schools have trailers to address overcrowding."   How do you plan to resolve this problem?  Explain.

Sharon Bulova

The Schools already receive a larger portion of bond funding than other County facilities.  I have worked with Mr. Tistadt to explore options in addition to our traditional funding mechanisms that could move the queue of school projects along more quickly.  One method is through a proposal to take advantage of today’s favorable construction market by using short-term financing alternatives for energy-related improvements.  When the Board of Supervisors adopted our budget for Fiscal Year 2012 we directed County staff to work closely with FCPS staff to identify short-term financing alternatives for energy improvements which are anticipated to result in significant energy savings.  The savings can be used to pay off the short term debt.  It is anticipated that the FCPS capital program will gain additional capacity by as much as $30 million through this process.

I will continue to work with the Schools to identify ways to meet both their capital and operating needs.

Christopher DeCarlo

Maybe some of the school renovation projects need to be scaled back to meet the available budget.  Fairfax County needs to stop looking at things upside down, deciding what they want to do first and then placing the burden of paying for it on the taxpayers.  The administration is continuously raising the standard and then expecting the taxpayers to provide funding to meet the new standard.

I graduated from George C. Marshall High School in 1976.  It was a perfectly functional school then and it is a functional school now with its limited renovation.  In 1976 we didn't even have air conditioning which, in a school with functional windows, is only needed for a short period of the school year.

Will Radle

I raised this very issue with the Lee District Supervisor, incumbent Chairman and the Lee District School Board Member at a FY2012 budget discussion hosted by the Lee District Association of Civic Organizations in March 2011.  The three incumbents were expressing they felt they achieved something special at $155 million.  I want to give credit to Supervisor Pat Herrity (R-Springfield) for his advocacy in refusing to support lower capital investment levels.

In the Voter’s Guide sponsored by the League of Women Voters, I am the only candidate for Fairfax County Chairman who identified as an infrastructure priority the need to quicken our renovation and modernization of schools to strengthen public education.

My government plan increases our investment in our highest priorities by over $273 million annually while lowering real estate taxes from $1.07 to a target of 93 cents.  I advocate quickening our Capital Improvement Program by increasing our investment by at least $25 million annually.  Remember, my back-up “Plan B” increases revenues by $80 million annually.

Michael "Spike" Williams

Don’t believe the hype, Mr. Tistadt would have you believe that we are tied to our current way of doing school renovations, but the reality is that there are ways of increasing the efficiency with which we perform this function. First of all many of the schools that require renovation are from the same generation and share very similar designs, that means that if they were addressed as a group massive savings could be achieved through sharing renovation design costs across multiple schools. The second part of this is to change to a design build process that will alleviate the backlog created by our current design process, make renovations more cost effective and efficient, and accelerate the timelines enabling us to react more swiftly the changes in the economy that present opportunities.

Patch will discuss school renovations and the Nov. 8 bond referendum at 11 a.m. Friday in a live chat with FCPS facilities and planning employees.


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