The audience gathered inside the Wacoochee Junior High School cafeteria held its breath as five of the six Lee County Board of Education members voted to approve the Smiths Station Attendance Area School Reorganization and Construction plan Tuesday night.
The revised plan is designed to allocate students into a combination of new and renovated schools to make traveling easier for parents who carpool their children to school. The plan will also reorganize the elementary schools into schools that will go from kindergarten to sixth grade.
A federal stimulus plan made it possible for Alabama to be eligible to receive funds for school districts to fund projects such as construction.
Stephen Nowlin, superintendent of Lee County schools, and the board of education applied for a bond issue to cover expenses within the new plan. "(The bond) is expected to be at an interest rate of around one percent for 16 years," Nowlin said. "The bond issue covers construction costs, land acquisition, architects fees, furniture and technology, among other things."
The low interest rate and borrowing costs are motivating the board to get the construction started, Nowlin said. He added that the board hopes to cut expenses, rather than raising taxes to pay for the remaining projects not funded by the bond. Influxes of about 700 students are projected to enter the Lee County school system between 2010 and 2011, according to the Base Realignment
And Closure committee. As a result of this influx, Lee County was one of four school systems that were approved for 90 percent of the requested funds. Roger Keel, board member, voted against the plan and said he thinks a better option would be to research other methods. "I realize there is a need for it," Keel said. "I'm just concerned about the different alternatives they need to look at instead of building new schools at this time." As children will be staying in the same schools for longer periods of time, Nowlin said he predicts that faculty and students will have better relationships in the new schools. "The child will feel like they know that principal," Nowlin said. "The principal will get to know the kids, the nurse will know the kids, the counselor will know the kids, so it's just so much more child centered."
The board will arrange a series of public meetings to seek citizen input, reactions and suggestions. The locations and times of the meetings have not been determined.
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