School leaders in the Wake County (North Carolina) district say they are monitoring the potential effects of newly imposed tariffs on its school construction plans and equipment replacements.
WRAL-TV reports that the school system says it usually buys its steel, lumber and aluminum from Canada. The Trump administration wants to impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports next month.
The tariff announcements are a "moving target" that the district will need to monitor and assess, Wake County School Superintendent Robert Taylor says.
But district leaders say there’s no way to avoid added costs. That's in part because of the time it takes to plan new schools. The design process is when officials account for potential costs, and it lasts about a year. Review lasts another six months or more before construction even begins. Costs of supplies can go up after the design phase has concluded, and officials try not to have to dip into reserves to cover those increases.
"What are we going to get impacted by?" said Mark Cooney, district director of project controls, facilities design and construction. "Definitely our structural steel....To what degree? That’s to be determined."
The school system spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year on building new schools, remodeling old ones and replacing aging and broken equipment. Those costs have already been a challenge for the district; it has $200 million in outstanding heating, ventilation and air conditioning needs. Meanwhile, dozens of schools had to close for a day or more in recent years when their heating or air conditioning didn't work.
Andrew Greenland, an economist at North Carolina State University, says construction cost increases could force schools to postpone projects.
"These tariffs are going to manifest pretty quickly into rising construction costs," Greenland said. "To the extent that some of these construction projects may be undertaken by municipalities and schools or groups [with] tight budgets -- they may have to think about delaying some of these projects until they get certainty about what prices are going to look like... as the construction projects take place."
School board members says that switching to domestically made HVAC products could also be challenging if they don't meet the exact specifications required by law or other stipulations.
