This is the time of the year when Eddie Campbell Jr. would normally be working on a big homework project.
Campbell, who is Monongalia County’s superintendent of schools, would normally be dug in right now with his colleagues in the district’s office, compiling a document that could be considered the ultimate wish list for an Infrastructure Santa Claus.
Santa, in this case, being the state School Building Authority in Charleston, which doles out dollars for capital needs projects in West Virginia’s 55 public school districts.
Said districts put together needs requests for the authority.
If your county is approved, you get notified in December — just in time for Christmas break and the spring term, so you can start putting these things out to bid.
That’s how it normally works.
Except there will be no SBA-as-Santa during Christmastime 2022.
Citing high construction costs, the authority said last week it won’t fund any new building projects this year — ultimately leaving many districts to do what they have to normally do, anyway.
“Well, sure, it’ll be different,” Campbell said, “but we’ll get by.”
Fiscal authority
Over the years, Mon’s district has done better than getting by, courtesy of the authority and the generosity of voters who traditionally vote in the affirmative for an excessive education levy that has brought millions of additional dollars in.
In the 12 years between 2010 and 2022, more than $84 million in capital projects have commenced here, including the construction of Eastwood Elementary and Suncrest Elementary schools.
Of that outlay, $52 million came from local funding, with the SBA awarding $32 million.
This coming spring, SBA-related work will launch in the local district, when a $2 million project to enclose the three buildings that make up the campus of North Elementary School begins.
Mon Schools received part of the monies for the project last year from the authority, in fact.
Not that Mon gets everything it wants for Christmas.
The SBA in recent years turned the district down two years in a row for a request to fund an expansion at the county Technical Education Center on Mississippi Street.
Learning labs for robotics, e-gaming and other pursuits are in the blueprint, as the district wants to transition the building into a career education center for middle-schoolers.
That plan will complement the standalone $72 million high school the district wants to construct in the next five years for STEM — science, technology, engineering and math.
“In terms of the SBA, we’re moving on from that,” Campbell said.
The tech center work will be funded by alternate line items within the budget, he said.
With the North Elementary project, the authority did a 50-50 match: Mon Schools put up $1 million and the SBA funneled in $1 million.
Such matches, the superintendent said with a slight chuckle, make dealing with authority all the easier.
“Hey, they’ll take all the money you can give them,” he said.
Fund manager
Campbell said he knows he’s luckier than some superintendents, in that Mon Schools doesn’t have to solely let projects ride on the SBA and whether or not the lucky letter arrives in December.
He knows, because he’s been there.
Before coming to Monongalia County, he headed Tucker’s County’s school district, where, as he says, “I signed every purchase order and bought every pencil.”
That’s because he had to, he said.
The county couldn’t get a levy passed for education.
And while no schools were built under Campbell’s tenure — given the population of the rural, mountain county, that wasn’t a need, he said — there were still lots of much-needed repairs that had be bankrolled, somehow, some way.
SBA dollars paid for new roofs and HVAC units for Tucker’s school buildings.
“We were pretty successful and we managed our money well,” he said.
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