At a recent meeting of the North Carolina Educational Facilities Planners (NCEFP), Steve “Plain Vanilla” Taynton, director of DPI School Planning Division, finally entered the fray in the school construction debate.
In April, his office will release the Facility Needs Survey, which will say that the state has over $12 billion in school construction needs. The announcement is timed to precede the “school bond season” that will begin with Lenoir County’s bond referendum on May 2. Wake County will announce their bond referendum amount in June. Other counties will not be far behind in announcing bond referendums for November.
Taynton is unfazed by rising school construction costs, and his office has done nothing to assist school districts cut costs. Instead, he has become an apologist for higher taxes and state funding of local school construction projects.
For Taynton, the problem is not that districts need to build more cost-effective schools or that alternative means of financing and building schools need to be used. The problem for Steve is that there is never enough money to build “quality” schools, rather than “plain vanilla” (in his words) schools.
Lest I forget, his presentation at the NCEFP meeting criticized John Locke Foundation research for (gasp!) suggesting that school districts should cut square footage on new school construction projects to build less expensive schools. I am sorry, Steve, but I guess I am a plain vanilla kind of guy.
