School board wants bonds on 2016 ballot | Raleigh News & Observer

The Johnston County Board of Education has adopted a resolution asking County Commissioners to place a new round of school bonds on the May 2016 ballot.

The board did not specify how much debt it wants to ask voters to approve, but the resolution asks for enough money to meet the needs laid out in the 2016 Schools Facility Plan. The school board adopted that plan in May, and it contains a total of $75.5 million in building and renovation projects.

The resolution notes that almost 700 new students come into Johnston schools each year, and enrollment already exceeds capacity at nearly half of the county’s schools.

If approved by commissioners, the size of the bond referendum will depend on how much money the county can afford to borrow, County Manager Rick Hester said.

“Generally the way it works is, there’s a list of needs, and then it comes down to what’s affordable,” he said.

The county is working with a consulting firm to determine its overall debt capacity, Hester said, and the county should have some rough numbers in about a month. Among other things, that report will project the future growth of county government revenue and expenditures.

In addition to funding school construction, Hester said, the commissioners will have to consider whether they need to reserve some debt capacity for other capital needs in the county.

Most of the 2016 Schools Facility Plan’s proposed building projects target needs in western and northwestern Johnston, where population growth continues to drive demand for more classrooms.

To ease current crowding and prepare for future growth, the school system wants to build:

▪  A $19.1 million elementary school in the Flowers Plantation area just east of Clayton in 2017.

▪  Powhatan Middle School in 2018 next to Powhatan Elementary in Clayton. The school district already owns land along Vinson Road for the middle school, which would cost about $18.5 million to build.

▪  Two dozen classrooms at Corinth Holders High School in 2016 and Cleveland High in 2017 for a total of $14 million. The extra space would raise each school’s capacity to 1,800 students.

▪  A 12-classroom addition at Archer Lodge Middle School in 2016.

The only major building project outside of western and northwestern Johnston County would be a 15-classroom addition at Four Oaks Middle School. The building plan also includes $8 million in mechanical and structural improvements at the county’s high schools.

‘Seize the moment’

In November 2013, voters approved $57 million in bonds for county schools and another $7 million for Johnston Community College. A good chunk of that money went to build a new North Johnston Middle School in Micro, which opened to students on Monday.

In 2014, state lawmakers tightened the rules on referendums so that counties may only hold bond votes during even-year elections. For the school board, that meant either asking voters to approve more debt in 2016, or waiting until 2018 to hold another bond referendum, school board chairman Larry Strickland said.

“With the law as it sits now, we need to seize the moment,” he said.

Not a week goes by, board member Keith Branch said, in which someone doesn’t ask him what the school system plans to do with all the kids coming into the county.

Superintendent Ed Croom suggested he loses sleep over that same question.

“I don’t think there’s a night goes by where I don’t think about that,” he said. “Especially in certain areas” of the county.