September 27, 2005

RALEIGH – The proposed $427 million school bond in Charlotte-Mecklenburg would fund facilities that are far more expensive than in comparable districts and ignores alternative ways to build schools at a lower cost to taxpayers, according to the findings of a report published Wednesday by the John Locke Foundation.

Terry Stoops, author of the Raleigh-based think tank’s Building for the Future report, used five different methods to evaluate the per-foot construction costs for Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s planned new schools, including comparisons to planned schools in Wake and Guilford counties. Stoops found that Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s costs were consistently higher – 28 percent higher than in a comparable North Carolina school district, in the case of the planned CMS high school, for example.

“The Charlotte-Mecklenburg plan would spend many millions of taxpayer dollars in ways unrelated to providing a good education to students,” Stoops said at a Sept. 28 press conference releasing the report in Charlotte. “Without innovative approaches to school construction, the planned series of bonds will exert a crippling tax burden on local residents.”

The $427 million school bond to be voted on in November is the first of four issues that CMS officials have planned through 2011 to finance a 10-year, $2 billion capital plan for the school district. The plan would build 47 new schools, add classrooms at 22 existing schools, acquire additional school sites, and fund various support facilities and renovation projects.

John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation, spoke at the press conference about the fiscal implications of the CMS capital plan. While some bond supporters appear to believe that the passage of a state-run lottery will significantly defray the cost of school construction in Mecklenburg County, Hood said that lottery proceeds will in reality play only a small role. A JLF assessment found that the planned CMS school bonds would cost more than $200 million a year to finance, while lottery revenues would likely remain below $20 million a year.

Noting that Charlotte-Mecklenburg is already one of the highest-taxed urban communities in North Carolina, Hood said that enacting the district’s capital plan would likely increase the tax rate by 22 percent or more when all the planned bonds are sold.

“The $427 million bond in 2005 is merely the opening bid on a massive construction project,” Hood said. “Can taxpayers really afford a new $2 billion debt?”

In Building for the Future, Stoops discussed a range of options available to public-school districts to build needed school facilities more rapidly and at lower cost. These include:

• Forming public-private partnerships that give developers incentives to build schools and lease them to districts for a fixed term.

• Rethinking design standards and non-educational amenities at new school sites.

• Raising private dollars to help fund stadiums and other sports facilities.

• Using modular construction for many school-building needs.

• Operating some educational programs through virtual, Internet-based schools.

• Adapting and reissuing existing buildings.

• Allowing more choice of schools to alleviate enrollment pressures and to model new approaches to building schools more efficiently.

On that last point, Lindalyn Kakadelis – former member of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education and currently director of JLF’s school-reform project, the North Carolina Education Alliance – spoke at the press conference about the innovative ways that charter schools have built their facilities across North Carolina.

National Heritage Academies, for example, recently built five schools in the urban counties of Wake, Durham, Forsyth, Guilford, and Mecklenburg. The cost per foot averaged $106, vs. $183 to $194 for the proposed CMS schools. In Rutherford County, Thomas Jefferson Classical Academy was built for about half the average cost of comparable public schools.

“Schools of all types should focus their resources on educating students, not building ornate facilities,” Kakadelis said. “These schools have waiting lists of willing, enthusiastic parents – they recognize and reward the right priorities in spending public dollars.”

Stoops, a former Virginia schoolteacher and research administrator at the University of Pittsburgh, observed that a recently poll showed mixed feelings at best among Mecklenburg voters about the school system’s financial decisions. Fewer than half supported a property tax increase for school construction and renovation – which the $427 million bond would require, even if upcoming lottery revenues meet their projections.

“Taxpayers rightfully grow impatient when school systems request multi-billion-dollar bond issues year after year,” Stoops said. “Public officials need to reform their school-construction process and embrace solutions that are fiscally sustainable and educationally effective over the long run.”

The report is available at the John Locke Foundation’s main website. Please contact Summer Hood at 919-828-3876 or [email protected] for more information about the Stoops paper or the Wednesday press conference on school construction in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.