| Clifton Elementary dispute moves to Virginia Supreme Court |
| The parents at Clifton Elementary School aren’t taking the closure of their school, which they say was politically motivated, lying down. After losing their case in circuit court, parents filed an appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court. “[Board member] Liz Bradsher was working for political gain, trying to move West Springfield High School up in the queue at Clifton’s expense,” said Kim Farrell, communications director of Friends of Community Schools. “The lower courts did not allow discovery, and there was important discovery parents made via FOIA e-mails.” The earliest the court will hear the appeal is March, Bradsher said. Clifton is slated to close in June. |
Fairfax County is proposing to speed up renovations at 22 public schools by one to two years, but the annual $155 million in county dollars that props up the plan is slated to drop to $130 million in 2013 — just as the first work is scheduled to begin. The school system estimated in 2008 that it would cost $359.5 million to renovate and create additions at 17 schools, but the 2009 costs came out to an unexpected $31.3 million in savings.
Dean Tistadt, chief operating officer of Fairfax’s school system, said construction costs and investment rates are lower than what he estimated because of the struggling economy. “We went from three, four, five bidders on most jobs to getting 12, 13, 14 bidders on most jobs,” Tistadt said. “Competition is definitely our friend.”
But he also said an “important assumption” of the proposal is that the county continues to fund the schools’ Capital Improvement Program at $155 million each year through 2016.
Supervisor Jeff McKay, D-Lee, said that amount has been approved for fiscal 2012 but will fall $25 million the next year. “Given how we are with the budget, facing a shortfall in neighborhood of $150 million, it’s too premature to give a commitment one way or the other,” McKay said.
The county’s contribution was supposed to be $130 million in fiscal 2012, as a contract between the school system and county Board of Supervisors that increased the fund expired, but Supervisor Pat Herrity, R-Springfield, lobbied to maintain the $155 million.
“We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with this market,” Herrity said. “We can make significant progress on the construction backlog.”
Clermont Elementary, Terraset Elementary, Sunrise Valley Elementary, Garfield Elementary and Terra Centre Elementary top the list of 21 elementary, one middle, and three high schools Fairfax plans to renovate by 2019 at $804.9 million; the five schools would be bumped up from a 2014 to a 2013 construction date.
Sunrise Valley’s renovations will include more access to natural light and doors for its open classrooms. Mara Bamberger, a special education teacher at Sunrise Valley, said that some of her students are “runners.”
“They want to go roam the hallways, and it’s hard to keep them in the classroom if there are no doors,” Bamberger said.
Tistadt said he expected the community to be “quite positive” about quicker renovations, which provide 8,800 more student seats; the school system is expecting about 10,000 more students by 2016.
A public hearing on the proposal is scheduled for Jan. 4, and the school board is set to vote Jan. 20.
