Here is a July 2010 update on the CIP. FCPS has been assessing school capacity challenges in the Southwestern County areas, and a capacity boundary study that includes 28 schools is underway to determine capacity solutions and additional capacity enhancement CIP projects that are needed in that part of FCPS.
How the School Board decides to resolve these capacity issues will directly impact the timing of WSHS’s renovation because capacity enhancement CIP projects are prioritized ahead of renovation ones, and the CIP budget is very constrained. We are very appreciative of decisions that the School Board is making to implement CIP solutions that optimize limited funding.
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. In order to address needed renovations and overcrowding, the School Board must use the monies that are available in the most effective manner possible.”
— July 8, 2010 School Board meeting materials
“The capital funding provided by the BOS, while generous, is insufficient to meet the needs of the school system.”
– Dean Tistadt, July 8, 2010 School Board meeting
“I operate in a world where we don’t have all the money to do what we need to do. And we have to ask the School Board to make some very difficult decisions because of that.”
– July 1, 2010 interview with Connection reporter Julie O’Donoghue
Also, FCPS Staff will provide the School Board a detailed readout and update on the CIP on July 19. The tough economy continues to positively impact the CIP. Project bids are coming in under budget projections from contractors eager for work. Once capacity issues are addressed, how much cost savings from CIP projects coming in under budget can be redeployed to the CIP renovation queue?
Current FCPS estimates are for a West Springfield High School renovation to begin in the summer of 2016 with a renovated WSHS in 2018. To put that date in perspective, that means that no West Springfield child currently older than 1st grade would attend a renovated WSHS.
Other than a relatively minor “patch & paint” touch up in 1989, WSHS has never received a structural renovation since it was built in 1966 – 44 years and counting. And there are also three unrenovated high schools behind WSHS in the CIP renovation queue that at this rate would not see a renovation until sometime in the 2020s. The current CIP renovation timelines are not viable for all of FCPS.
The West Springfield HS facility does not provide optimal educational environments all FCPS high school students deserve, especially in science, technology and music. FCPS students in unrenovated high schools like West Springfield are placed at an unfair advantage among both FCPS student peers in new or renovated schools and also peers from other school systems like Arlington, Loudoun and Prince William, and this reality is unacceptable. WSHS students, faculty and staff do an awesome job every day to overcome these facility challenges.
How long will it take to solve these challenges? How can Fairfax provide more capital funding?
