Cooper visits Rosewood Middle, pushes for school construction bond
By Sierra Henry
Published in News on August 15, 2018 5:50 AM
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Governor Roy Cooper talks to Ken Derksen, at right, from Wayne County Public Schools during his tour of Rosewood Middle School. He stopped by the school to talk about school bonds that could help build schools to replace instead of continue to repair schools.
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Principal Catherine Lassiter, center, talks about the structural issues of the school as Governor Roy Cooper tours Rosewood Middle during his visit to Wayne County Tuesday to discuss a new school bond. The school was originally build with money from a school bond in 1924.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Governor Roy Cooper, left, gets a look at one of the classrooms as he tours Rosewood Middle School Tuesday to discuss a new school bond. Several of the classrooms have water damage on the ceilings, pictured, and sagging floors.
Classrooms that can be only accessed through outdoor entryways, leaking roofs and paint chipping from the ceiling are just a few challenges school buildings built in the 1920s might face.
For Rosewood Middle School, these infrastructure issues have rendered several classrooms unusable, Catherine Lassiter, RWM principal, said.
"When you're in different buildings, when you're having to maneuver around classrooms that leak, it's challenging. Very challenging," Lassiter said.
In January, these maintenance issues could be addressed through a nearly $2 billion school construction bond heavily supported by Gov. Roy Cooper.
Cooper, who toured Rosewood Middle School Tuesday afternoon with Lassiter and Superintendent Michael Dunsmore, discussed structural issues of the school and how the construction bond would help rebuild schools across the state, like Rosewood.
"North Carolina needs to put forth a school construction bond that will help local governments. It's very difficult, particularly for our rural schools, to be able to afford the money they need to build new schools," Cooper said.
"It's pretty clear that we need some new schools -- at some point, the cost of repair and renovation doesn't make sense."
According to Cooper, many of the schools built between the 1920s and '50s were paid for through state bonds. North Carolina has not provided a public-school bond for renovating or rebuilding schools since 1996, he said.
"I think we can afford it, I think the taxpayers want to invest in our public schools, and we don't need to continue pouring money into repair and renovation when we should be building some new schools for our kids," Cooper said. "A lot of our schools were built with bonds and when you look at the current environment right now, interest rates are relatively low ... construction costs are not going to get any lower, so it makes sense to invest now."
Tim Harrell, director of project operations for Wayne County Public Schools, said Rosewood Middle School is one of the public schools in Wayne County that would be completely replaced rather than renovated due to its structural issues.
"Sometimes it's more cost effective to build new than to try and renovate the old because you run into a lot of issues -- you run into potential hazards, material issues, you run into trying to redo the plumbing, electrical wiring," Harrell said. "When you renovate, you have to bring it up to modern code. So, the cost to bring a building like this or other buildings of this age to modern code for safety may be just as expensive."
Harrell compared the price it would cost to rebuild Rosewood Middle School to how much the county is currently paying to rebuild Meadow Lane Elementary School. He said that middle schools typically cost more to rebuild than elementary schools, but that he does not expect the cost to rebuild Rosewood to be much more than $20 million.
"An elementary school at Meadow Lane: that school is running us about $18 million, and it's 109,000 square feet," Harrell said. "Typically, a middle school is going to cost you a little more than an elementary, so you may say probably around $20 million would be a high estimate, but typically a new middle school is going to be somewhere in the 20 (million dollar range) because you gotta build your athletic fields and all those external things.
Other schools needing some form of renovation include Mount Olive Middle, Southern Wayne High, Carver Heights Elementary, Goldsboro High and many other schools in Wayne County that need to be updated to modern code.
"Any bond money and any fusion money would greatly help us get our buildings caught up and get things repaired, renovated or fixed," Harrell said.
For Lassiter, the possibility for Rosewood Middle to have all buildings under one roof is what she is looking forward to if the $1.9 billion school construction bond passes.
With all of the entryways and classrooms that can be only accessed by exiting and then re-entering the building, Lassiter believes the new school would provide more safety for students and teachers as well as a better learning environment.
"I'm very excited the governor was here today to look at our facility and see the needs of our school and Wayne County because obviously the teachers and the students deserve to be in a nice facility where teaching and learning can actually take place," she said.