Supes tee up $135M for new HCHS, elementaries

Finance committee backs borrowing to replace high school; plans to raise school salaries tweaked



The discolored front facade of the high school; below, members of the Board of Supervisors’ finance committee.

The discolored front facade of the high school; below, members of the Board of Supervisors’ finance committee.

Halifax County is poised to bor­row $105 million to build a new high school with an additional $25 mil­lion set aside for elementary school upgrades — the recommendation of the Board of Supervisors’ finance committee, which met on Monday.

The finance committee, chaired by ED-2 supervisor Jeff Francisco, voted 3-1 to borrow a sum total of $135 million for school facility im­provements, relying mostly on the 30-year revenue haul from the coun­ty’s 1-cent sales tax approved by vot­ers in 2019. Those sales tax dollars would be combined with a second, smaller pot of money — expiring debt service from the last round of school construction in Halifax Coun­ty in the mid-2000s — to pay off the loan debt.

With $135 million in borrowed funds, the Board of Supervisors would have $105 million for a new high school, $25 million to spend on elementary school facilities and a $5 million contingency fund for future school capital projects or to pay for other priorities such as fire, rescue and law enforcement.

 

 

Separately, the finance committee endorsed, with minor modifications, a plan by the Halifax County School Board to sharply raise compensation levels for teachers and school support staff. The compensation package, de­veloped by outgoing Superintendent of Schools Dr. Mark Lineburg, re­verses Halifax County’s longstand­ing pattern of lagging teacher salaries and would make county school em­ployees among the best-paid in the region.

The School Board voted on Nov. 18 to implement mid-year pay raises for teachers and school support staff, starting Jan. 1, 2022. However, mem­bers of the finance committee — con­cerned about the ongoing expense of the compensation plan — called for the teacher increases to begin in Feb­ruary 2022. By comparison, raises would go in effect a month earlier in January for school secretaries, teach­ers’ aides, custodial and maintenance workers and other non-instructional support staff, excluding central office administrators and building princi­pals.

Both groups of employees — teachers, on 12-month contracts, and support staff personnel, on 10-month contracts — would receive six-month pay hikes in the current con­tract period. The pay increases would be in full force in successive years, under the framework approved by the finance committee.

The panel’s recommendations will now go to the full Board of Su­pervisors for a vote, possibly at the Dec. 6 regular monthly meeting. To take part in the next round of school construction borrowing, the county would need to submit a request by January 2022 to the Virginia Public School Authority, which currently issues debt at a low rate of 2.1 percent interest.

The work of the finance committee to fashion a long-term plan for the tattered high school and school employee pay follows a Nov. 18 joint meeting of the Board of Supervisors and School Board that appeared to leave a number of key questions unresolved. Even a staunch critic of plans to build a new Halifax County High School, ED-5 supervisor Dean Throckmorton, said he was reluctant to vote against the finance committee’s recommendation to borrow for a replacement facility.

“Even though I’d rather see [the high school] facelifted or renovated, I’m not going to hold it up,” said Throckmorton.

Adding some $4 million in pandemic relief funds that the School Board can spend on facility upgrades, the project budget for a new high school would be around $109 million — not far off the $118 million figure for an all-new high school facility provided by Roanoke-based Branch Builds and RRMM Architects. The firms have submitted a PPEA (public-private education facilities) construction proposal that the School Board is considering but has not adopted for a new high school.

Supervisors on the finance panel and County Administrator Scott Simpson expressed confidence that $109 million would be enough money to build a new facility of around 265,000 square feet — shrinking the current HCHS footprint of 320,000 square feet — while covering the costs of furnishings and technology, new athletic facilities, and other facets of the construction project. The building itself is expected to cost around $85 million.

Simpson called the proposed $109 million project budget “a realistic number” —enough to move forward with the Branch Builds proposal, which he suggested can be trimmed down by some $9 million, or to pay for another high school design if the School Board opts to reopen the project to other prospective bidders.

The debt for a new high school would be shouldered using revenues from the 1-cent sales tax — currently about $3.6 million annually — together with some $1.8 million in existing debt service that comes off the books in 2027. The county is nearing the end of annual payments of $4.7 million on borrowing for previous school construction projects — notably, renovations to Halifax County Middle School and the construction of South Boston Elementary School and Cluster Springs Elementary School, which opened in 2007.

Advisors with Davenport Public Finance have suggested that up to $2.2 million of that expiring $4.7 million in debt service could be reapplied toward the loan for a high new school, leaving $2.5 million in reserve — enough to cushion the blow if the Clover Power Station ceases operations and property tax revenues from the coal-fired plant dry up.

Instead of $2.2 million, however, the finance committee voted to set aside $1.8 million annually from expired debt service to funnel back into a new school bond issue.

Three of the four members of the finance committee — Francisco, Stanley Brandon (ED-6) and Garland Ricketts (ED-7) — backed the $135 million borrowing plan, although Ricketts complained the $25 million portion for elementary schools “is probably underweighted” before he cast a yes vote. The lone opposing vote came from ED-1 supervisor Ricky Short.

On the matter of the school employee compensation package, finance committee members voted unanimously to back the School Board’s decision to implement the pay raises immediately, despite continuing concerns about affordability.

The net cost of employee pay hikes is roughly $1.6 million, after factoring in spending cuts that Lineburg has proposed to ease the full expense of the compensation package. About $1.1 million will be saved by leaving 10 open positions unfilled — a step Lineburg and Central Office administrators have already taken — and by offering early retirement incentives to coax some 30 long-time employees to step down, replacing them with younger, cheaper hires.

By itself, $1.6 million for higher salaries would require new revenue equivalent to a 4-cent increase in the county’s real estate tax. Another option is to find savings within the current school budget — a path that has led to a heated debate on closing elementary schools.

Simpson wryly suggested that government is often blamed for being inefficient with taxpayer dollars, but people generally don’t view the operation of small, underpopulated schools through the same lens.

“We want you to be efficient, but don’t do it this way, do it that way,” Simpson said, referring to public reaction to the idea of operating fewer schools, the topic of controversy at school consolidation hearings around the county in October.

The cost of the compensation package — which can be covered in the short term with unspent budget carryover funds — is likely to force a decision on either a tax increase or elementary school closings within the next two years, Simpson said.

The difficulty of sustaining the pay package “encourages some deep thinking on elementaries sooner rather than later,” he said.

“If there’s $2.2 million annually in efficiency savings, that does sustain what you’re looking at,” said Simpson — an apparent reference to the budget savings from closing Sinai, Meadville and Clays Mill elementaries, as presented by Lineburg.

For now, however, a decision can wait, since short-term funding is available to handle the cost of the employee pay plan over the first two years. The School Board has some $3.3 million in unspent carryover funds from the prior two budgets, and that money can be used to pay for two years of higher salaries.

Lineburg also presented the committee with a fresh sum of money to fund the mid-year implementation of the salary package — a projected cash surplus in the current school budget, which took effect in July and runs through June 2022.

The school division expects to end the year with $1,273,000 in unspent funds — the consequence of lower-than-anticipated expenditures on summer school and other services, and the use of $200,000 in pandemic funds to purchase two school buses that had been part of the regular budget. That’s on top of $600,000 in savings from the ten job openings left unfilled.

Francisco suggested that the county should go forward with teacher pay increases in early 2022 but hold back on granting midyear pay hikes to support staff until more is known about next year’s school budget, the largest portion of which is funded by the state.

“I hate to put something in the budget they [the School Board] are not going to be able to handle next year,” said Francisco.

The teacher share of mid-year pay raises — about $400,000 — is more manageable, and the higher priority, he argued.

“We’re losing teachers like crazy. It’s my goal to get everyone where they need to be,” Francisco said.

But Brandon countered that the loss of support staff is equally a problem, one that threatens the school division’s ability to operate effectively. Brandon said it was “imperative” to raise pay levels for teachers and non-teachers alike.

An exception, he noted, is administrators and building principals, who earn nearly $73,000 per year. Brandon suggested excluding that group from the mid-year pay plan, lowering the cost by around $80,000.

Lineburg, who attended the finance committee meeting, said the idea would be acceptable. “Our School Board goal was to do [raises for] all. But I’m realistic …. If you had to wait on administrative pay, I think [people] would understand that,” Lineburg said.

On the subject of pay hikes for everyone else, “I personally feel support staff is just as important as teachers,” said Brandon. “Teachers can’t do it alone.”

Francisco agreed that low pay for school support staff is a big problem. “People who make $14,000 a year who have been with us for 30 years — that’s not good,” he said.

Ricketts said he was opposed to a mid-year pay increase for school employees, arguing that “they agreed to work for what they’re working for” when they signed employment contracts in the spring. But Francisco and Brandon argued strongly for granting the mid-year raises, both warning that Halifax County Public Schools could see a further exodus of employees unless the county signals that better days — and higher salaries — lie ahead.

“I truly believe in my heart, if they [employees] have this money in January, it’s going to make a difference,” said Francisco. With the employee compensation plan in place, those who have left HCPS for better-paying jobs elsewhere “will start coming back instead of crossing county lines.”

Brandon offered the bleaker assessment of what might happen if the county doesn’t act quickly to shore up low school employee pay. “We can’t continue to sustain our educational program in Halifax County if our teachers are leaving — that’s the reality,” he said.

“I’m very concerned about our school system. I see what’s happening, I know what’s happening, and it’s not good,” Brandon added.

Under the compensation package developed by Lineburg, teachers with ten years’ experience would see their base salary increase from $42,875 to $45,124 annually, a $2,249 rise. Teachers with 20 years’ experience would go from making $46,325 to $51,920 annually, a $5,585 jump.

For support staff, salary levels also would rise sharply. A teacher’s aide now making $17,557 would get a $5,386 raise, bringing their salary to $22.943. Custodians would go from making $20,385 annually to $22,917, a $2,532 salary increase.

Similar increases are built into the pay scales for all school employees, with principals and administrators last on the list to receive pay increases, after other employees are taken care of first.

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