Arlington Public Schools has spent hundreds of millions of dollars reconstructing two high schools, but funds are in jeopardy of drying up before the county’s third and lowest-income-area high school gets a makeover.
Arlington County Manager Ron Carlee has indicated the county will cap the amount of money schools can finance through bonds, saying Arlington’s debt will reach a perilously high level unless the county and the schools curb their construction rates.
Arlington just finished the $105 million, bond-financed overhaul of Washington-Lee High School — the most expensive high school construction project in Virginia history.
Yorktown High, which already has undergone $25 million of reconstruction, is scheduled for a $75 million second-phase overhaul this year.
The County School Board has said that Wakefield High — the South Arlington high school with a greater proportion of low-income children than the other two — is next on the priority list.
The project is expected to surpass the other two, costing an estimated $150 million, partially due to escalating construction prices.
Thomas Jefferson Middle School and the Arlington Career Center also have long been listed as needing significant improvements.
But according to a January memo from Carlee, the schools likely will be limited to between $34 million and $56 million in bond financing this cycle to keep the county’s debt at a tenable level.
The schools would be kept to a similar amount during the 2010 and 2012 bond cycles.
With those constraints, whether the schools would be able to start any projects outside the $75 million Yorktown renovation remains uncertain.
“I think it’s clear that our needs exceed our resources,” School Board Chairman Ed Fendley said. “I do think it’s going to be a tough couple of years — I think that much is apparent. We have yet to hear from our community and to work out a plan for what would be best.”
County and schools officials are scheduled to release their respective capital improvement plans in May.
