Letter to the Editor
Published: March 20, 2008

Tuesday, March 11, 2008, was one of those great late winter days in Orange County. At least it started out that way. However, it ended on a very sour note. At approximately 5:15 p.m. on a vote of 3 to 2, the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted to almost double Orange County’s debt service from a current $87.2 million to approximately $145 million. Supervisors Frame, Goodwin and Johnson voted for the increase, Burkett and Pace voted against.

This all came after a presentation by Orange County School Superintendent, Dr. William Crawford; he gave a 40-minute Power-Point presentation on enrollment projections. The audience consisted of mostly county/school board employees and members of the school board. There were less than six non-county employed taxpayers in attendance. Two interesting facts came out of Dr. Crawford’s presentation: the first being that the county schools receive funding based on average daily attendance or what is termed ADM (average daily membership). Orange County’s ADM is 95 percent, which means with an enrollment of 5,000 plus students on any given day, there are 250 students absent. That equals about 10 teachers and 10 classrooms. Therefore, a school for 600 actually means a school for 630.

The second interesting fact was that Dr. Crawford said you don’t start the process to build additional classroom capacity until the current capacity has reached about 115 percent and trends show further growth. The reason for this, he said, was that if you started before that, you would have schools operating at about 60 percent capacity.

The county’s published agenda called for a public comment period after Dr. Crawford’s presentation, and I for one had prepared notes for such an opportunity.

However, Supervisor “King Mark the First” Johnson decreed that there would be no public comment period. The supervisors went into discussion, with Supervisor Frame declaring that Dr. Crawford’s presentation had answered his questions on enrollment projections and he was ready to vote on the school bond issue.

This surprised me, because I felt the presentation raised more questions than it answered, including: Why are we building a middle school when middle school capacity hasn’t reached the 115 percent threshold, but the elementary school capacity has, and growth trends are in decline? But then I remembered that just about a year ago, the school board asked that an elementary school be built. Johnson countered with a 1,400-seat middle school. (I think this was based on his many years as an administrator in a public school system(s), certainly not from information off the internet.)

A compromise was reached and a 1,200-seat middle school was agreed to by all five school board members and the board of supervisors.
Further discussion between the supervisors took place with Mrs. Pace questioning the wisdom of building a middle school that will be at less than 75 percent capacity for a number of years. Johnson decreed that this was “good planning.”

Good planning? In my opinion, with the current economic forecast, it is at best reckless misappropriation of taxpayers’ hard-earned money. When questioned by Mrs. Pace, Mr. Rolfe, our county administrator, said that to pay for just this school, the “tax rate would have to be raised seven cents” or 16.66 percent, for a 20-year period. The vote took place and the Orange County taxpayer was brutalized once again, by Johnson and his followers. After the meeting broke for a 5:30 “work session,” three of the school board members (which is a quorum), held an impromptu meeting at the entrance of the Gordon Building, with Free-Lance Star reporter Robin Knepper.

During this meeting, it was reported that District 2 School Board member Mrs. Waugh-Robinson said this was all about the children. Being one that hates to disagree with our elected officials, I have to say it is not all about the children. The school board advocates for the students, but they also have a responsibility to the students’ parents and all the county’s taxpayers. I have yet to hear or see in print why Mrs. Waugh-Robinson believes this proposed middle school is the best solution to the county’s current classroom capacity crisis. To me a more practical and cost-effective approach that would provide improved circumstances for more students would have been to spend the taxpayers’ money by: (1) Building additional elementary school capacity in the eastern and western part of the county; (2) Increase the size of the Locust Grove Middle School to 800/840 ADM students; (3) Buy textbooks, so students have books to take home; and (4) Hire an architect to determine the best approach to increasing high school capacity. This would take care of four of the items on Dr. Crawford’s to-do list, with less money than the $60-70 million the middle school will cost. It’s also too bad the previous school board and the administration decided to convert the old Prospect Heights Middle School into office space. With renovation it certainly would have provided great buffer space to meet the current classroom capacity crisis.

In closing, I would like to suggest that meetings that will put the county taxpayers in debt should be held at a time when the taxpayers can attend, not when they most likely cannot, but maybe that’s the plan.

John Bangs
Orange