The Guilford County (N.C.) district has proposed a $2 billion facilities master plan that calls for seven new schools, 22 school that would be rebuilt, and 13 campuses that would close.
The Greensboro News & Record reports that the plan also would eliminate the district's more than 500 mobile and temporary classrooms and consolidate most of nearly a dozen scattered administrative offices into one facility.
The work would be spread out across 10 or 15 years. [View the 73-page proposed master plan.]
District administrators shared the proposal Tuesday with a joint facilities committee that includes county commissioners and school board members.
Cooperative Strategies, a consulting firm that crafted the plan, says the average school building in Guilford County dates to 1966, and many of the campuses are in poor shape.
The proposal calls for rebuilding 22 schools on existing sites, including Page and Southern Guilford, two of the district's large high schools.
A new $86 million Page would be built on the site of neighboring Cone Elementary, which would be demolished. The existing Page would be torn down and that area turned into athletic fields.
Southern High would be rebuilt on its existing site for about $55 million.
The plan also calls for constructing seven new schools, including a $71 million high school in the northwest area of the county. The new high school would be an aviation magnet high school, with 800 seats for students from its attendance zone and another 400 for interested students from elsewhere in the county.
Some schools would close, such as Murphey and Wiley elementary schools in Greensboro.
Others would combine, such as Southern Elementary and Sumner Elementary in the southern part of the county. And some schools would expand their grade configurations, such as Jackson Middle School in Greensboro, which would become a K-8 magnet school.
The proposal calls for the county to close, and potentially sell, 10 of the district's 12 administrative offices and instead combine them into a $31 million school administration building on a new site.
School board Chairwoman Deena Hayes-Greene says she thinks the proposed master plan could be a financial benefit to taxpayers because the county and schools are taking a more systematic proactive approach than in past years. So if taxpayers are going to have shell out for school building needs anyway, they might as well be paying for good schools built to last and building strategies designed to meet educational needs.
