School board OKs first new bond projects
Jun. 1—GUILFORD COUNTY — The Guilford County Board of Education named 36 school projects and two administrative projects Tuesday evening to be included in the first phase of the work that will be paid for by the $1.7 billion bond package that voters approved in May.
The project ordinances the board approved authorize spending $228 million for project management and design work. Additional funds will be requested as the projects progress.
The projects approved for the first phase include ones at Northwood, Shadybrook, Kirkman Park elementary schools, Montlieu Academy of Technology, Johnson Street Global Studies, Welborn Middle/Kearns Academy, 6-12 Preparatory Academy and Andrews High School.
The approved project ordinances also include $48 million for deferred maintenance, technology, safe schools, educational adequacy and athletics, which will pay for improvements at every school.
The board also selected 10 firms to contract for architectural/engineering work. The 10 firms will be assigned specific projects after consulting with program management.
In other business, the board voted to give Summit Search Solutions of Asheville its first shot ever at leading a search for public school system superintendent. A few board members expressed some reservations about Summit's search record because although it is extensive it has been exclusively for college-level or nonprofit leaders.
But they had more reservations about the other two firms that were interviewed, Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates, or HYA, based in Illinois, and the North Carolina School Boards Association, based in Raleigh, and voted 6-3 to hire Summit to help the board search for a replacement for Superintendent Sharon Contreras. Contreras is leaving this summer to become the CEO of The Innovation Project, an education-related nonprofit in Raleigh.
Board member Khem Irby first suggested hiring HYA.
Board member Anita Sharpe immediately countered with a recommendation for Summit.
"No. 1, Summit is local," Sharpe said. "No. 2, I believe they will bring us a larger, more diverse pool of candidates."
Sharpe said she looked into a number of HYA's searches in recent years and felt that some fell short.
Board chair Deena Hayes-Green said Summit's lack of superintendent search experience bothered her some, but both of the company's representatives who were interviewed by board members last week had long careers in public school administration before joining Summit.
She indicated agreement with some of Sharpe's criticisms of HYA.
"And the North Carolina School Boards Association was just a little underwhelming," she said.
The board also voted unanimously to approve the names for two new schools that will be opened in High Point.
The High Point Newcomers School on the campus of High Point Central High School, which will serve immigrant children, will be named the Sylvia Mendez Newcomers School in honor of a Hispanic civil rights pioneer from California. Her family brought a lawsuit, Mendez v. Westminster, in 1947 that served as a precursor to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling that found racial segregation in schools unconstitutional.
A large crowd of people, many carrying posters with Mendez's name, came in support of the name after board member T. Dianne Bellamy Small had objected at the board's meeting in April to naming a school in Guilford County after someone who never lived here.
Small said after Tuesday's vote that she was glad she had "raised some sand" in April because the outpouring of support since that meeting convinced her she was wrong and that the Mendez name has solid community backing.
The planned Southwest Area K-8 School in north High Point will be the Katherine G. Johnson School for Science and Mathematics in honor of NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, an African American woman whose role in space flights was chronicled in the book and movie "Hidden Figures." The kindergarten through eighth-grade Southwest school will have a science, technology, engineering and math, known as STEM, component.
Sharpe repeated an objection she raised in April, saying that people might confuse the new Katherine Johnson school with Johnson Street Global Studies school in High Point, which she thinks should be renamed.
Contreras suggested Sharpe submit a formal recommendation to the committee in charge of facility names.
