Monkey Business Report: Staffing a School that doesn’t exist
Would you leave your job for another that exists only in the minds of sneaky bureaucrats and politicians? It’s happening right now in Moore County. And it’s going to get really expensive for the rest of us before all is said and done.
Our local paper, Pravda-on-Pennsylvania, proudly trumpeted the news recently that some county public schools administrators had been hired for a yet-to-be-built “innovative high school” to be located on the campus of Sandhills Community College.
In 2023, legislators coughed up a $25 million grant to partially cover the development of this new concept school. Judging by the overall surprised reaction to the news, the deal was apparently worked out in a very closed-door, hush-hush manner.
The community college board – where most decisions are made by two to three people and rubber-stamped by the 15 or so other board members – had the news about the project revealed to them last year. Insiders tell me they were shown a conceptual site rendering of the footprint for the proposed new school building.
The county school board — who you’d think would be driving something like this – was ambushed by the proposal as well. Insiders explain that there is no money set aside to cover development and construction costs above the $25 million gift from Raleigh.
County commissioners have already granted the schools a firm, set amount to spend for the current fiscal year. Every cent is earmarked for something specific. This proposed school is not one of those things, we’re told.
State money should cover the cost of shifting the current school system employees over to the proposed school at the college campus. But who or what will cover the project cost above the $25 million initial *gift* from the taxpayers?
The school board already has a strategic plan in place for construction. We’re told, in order for the county schools to foot the bill for the “concept high school”, they would likely have to welsh on their promise to Carthage leaders to build a new elementary school in that community. (That would surely go over like a fart in church.)
The touch could be put on county economic development leaders or the region’s Visitors Bureau. But neither of those entities is jumping at the chance to foot the remainder of the bill for the propose “concept high school.”
We’re told that legislators are demanding that the new high school be up-and-running on the Sandhills campus by the fall. As far as anyone knows, the permitting and design process has not even started. But considering the secretive, non-transparent modus operandi of the Sandhills administration, it might already be done.
We’re told the plan, initially, will be to run the school out of an existing building on the college campus. If there is room out there to conduct all of the college’s business PLUS run a high school, then WHY DOES A NEW BUILDING NEED TO BE CONSTRUCTED?
Nowadays, a visit to the Sandhills campus at any given time on any given day will reveal a shockingly high amount of unused classroom space in already-existing campus buildings.
There’s been no word if any government types have bothered to do a space analysis out there on Airport Road. *I guess the plan is to keep throwing up expensive tax-funded buildings that will be one-third occupied at best each day?*
Mr. and Mrs. Nagy, their cohorts in the Pravda newsroom, and the Moore County Democrats all told us the days of *nonsense* by the county school board would be ended by electing their fearsome foursome. (So, I guess hiring people to run a school that exists only in a couple of bureaucratic brains now counts as SMART?)
