Reopening Blair Not Likely Solution to Overcrowding in 2012

By Amber Lester Kennedy Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Reopening James Blair Middle School to students won’t be as simple as removing temporary office walls, according to Williamsburg-James City County school administrators.

Although the administration hasn’t finished moving into the building, it might be forced to move out sooner if the WJCC School Board wanted to reopen the school to address overcrowding at the middle school level. The administration is suggesting that if the board went that route, James Blair be refurbished and renovated for $5.9 million; it would cost an additional $2.2 million to staff the school. Reopening the school would give the division an additional 700 seats; if moderate growth projections are right, the division will likely need about 148 seats by 2012.

The board now has four options: reopen James Blair; construct a new middle school; build additions; or lease trailers. At its Tuesday meeting, most of the board members leaned toward leasing trailers until a full fourth middle school is needed.

James Blair was closed last spring, with its staff and furniture moving to the newly constructed Lois Hornsby Middle School last August. At the start of the decade, James City County’s rapid growth led the division to make plans for a fourth middle school. When the economy slowed, population growth slowed, too, and the division found a full fourth middle school wouldn’t yet be needed.

In 2009, the WJCC School Board approved a plan to close James Blair until a fourth middle school would be needed; at that time, the administration estimated that would be around 2016 or later. The board also agreed to a plan that would allow James Blair to be converted to an administrative office building and a home for the Academy for Life and Learning at a cost of $2.8 million. When the plan was approved, the board was told removing temporary walls and reconverting the building to a school would cost $640,000; in a memo dated Feb. 15, Assistant Superintendent for Academic Services Scott Burckbuchler lists that cost at $830,900.

Last week, Burckbuchler sent a memo outlining the four options to the School Board, the Williamsburg City Council and the James City County Board of Supervisors in preparation for their joint meeting on Feb. 23. In that memo, he cautioned that a fire inspection in the fall revealed a firewall was not up to code, and would have to be fixed if the building became a school again. The repairs would cost an estimated $92,000.

He also recommended the board members consider spending $649,170 to renovate the school’s cafeteria; $307,350 to renovate its auditorium; $1.8 million to enlarge classrooms to the size suggested by the Virginia Department of Education; $2.8 million to refurbish lighting, locker rooms and more; and $580,760 to upgrade classroom technology. The administration also proposes allocating $175,500 to upgrade a playing field and $207,545 to repair the bus loop. The latter proposals are classified as “optional.”

The costs of reopening would also include $800,000 to purchase additional classroom and office furniture and library books. That cost was anticipated when the division planned to open a fourth middle school, Burckbuchler said.

Facilities Manager Alan Robertson said many of those items have appeared on previous Capital Improvement Plans and would have continued to be proposed if the building hadn’t become an administrative office this year. James Blair has had few upgrades since its construction in 1955; the last major refurbishment was in 1990, followed by a new roof in 1998, a new front entrance in 2003 and new gym lighting in 2009. Both Robertson and Burckbuchler say several of the proposed upgrades don’t have to be approved, but will need to be addressed at some point if the division wants its middle schools to be equitable.

For example, only four of Blair’s classrooms, all used for science, are comparable in size to classrooms at Hornsby.

In July 2009, when the board first approved the James Blair conversion plan, Assistant Superintendent of Operations Robert Becker cautioned that renovations would be needed regardless of Blair’s future. “The condition of Blair is such that we would have to renovate,” he said. “We’ve had to do something with Blair for two to three years now.” (Read that article here.)

Only one board member voiced approval of the third option of building additions at Berkeley and Hornsby middle schools, which would cost about $3 million. Board Chair Jim Nickols said he felt it would be forward-thinking, the economic climate is good for construction and a need exists. He added that “learning cottages” can make students feel excluded from their school, and after working for a decade to stop using trailers, he wasn’t prepared to use them again.

Members Joe Fuentes and Jim Kelly told him they felt trailers were the best option because they could divert capital improvement money toward the needed renovations at Blair. “The longer you go with Blair off-line, the more the cost-effectiveness of putting it back as a school diminishes,” Fuentes said. “Additions are not the direction I would like to go in…that’s the fix for when things have slowed down.”

Budget Adoption Update

While Superintendent Steven Constantino’s proposed budget has been released, he reminded the board it is currently a “hypothesis” of what revenue the division can expect from the state and localities. The General Assembly concluded its session on Sunday, but the Virginia Department of Education is not expected to provide detailed financial allocation information to school divisions until Friday.

With that in mind, the board is considering scheduling a special meeting to adopt the budget after its scheduled March 15 meeting; that decision will be based on the information from VDOE. The board is required to have adopted a budget by April 1.