Next month, 28 public school districts from across West Virginia will present their needs projects to the state School Building Authority.
The SBA is the agency that doles out the dollars for new construction and other large-scale endeavors, such as classroom additions and gymnasiums.
However, those petitioners will have to do their math homework first, the authority’s executive director Andy Neptune said.
As in, contractor-math, said Neptune, a former teacher and administrator in Marion County Schools who was summoned to Charleston for his new job by Gov. Jim Justice this past January.
The SBA has that same assignment, Neptune said.
At issue: The current rate the authority pays per square footage for the requested work.
Said rate currently comes out to $307 per square foot, which has been the authority’s standard since 2019, as set by its construction committee.
Then, COVID showed up.
And prices for materials rocketed up – like the hand of the smart kid in the front row.
“That’s not really a ‘true’ number for us right now,” Neptune said.
It didn’t take long, he said, to realize that $307 in pre-COVID money just isn’t the same as $307, post-pandemic.
Counties keep having to file requests for supplemental funds from his agency, he said.
Should an initial request come in at $20 million for a new school – “I’m just putting that out as an example,” he said – the hypothetical county is likely going to have to head back, hat in hand.
“They won’t have enough to pay for it,” he said. “We need to set a rate that’s more sound with our current market.”
He’s spent the past four months or so watching what school districts in neighboring Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kentucky have been doing in relation to their infrastructure needs.
And he’ll preside over another meeting with that same committee on Monday, for more reconfiguring.
Reconfiguring, Neptune knows.
A++, for effort
Before the governor’s call, he was directing maintenance and facilities management services for Marion County Schools, which gave him his first job as a teacher at East Dale Elementary 34 years ago.
East Dale isn’t one of them, but a number of Marion’s schools are nearing the century mark.
The original Mannington High School, now a middle school, dates back to 1925.
And there’s Fairmont Senior, with its 1928 time-stamp.
Still other schools and facilities came in through President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration.
Fairmont’s multiuse East-West stadium was built in 1938 as a WPA project.
The former high schools of Fairview, Monongah, Rivesville and Neptune’s hometown Barrackville – all very much in use as middle schools today – carry the WPA mark in their masonry, as well.
Farmington High, of that same vintage, was lost to mine subsidence in 1975.
Over the years, the district next door has worked around buildings adorned with architectural time-period details that needed preserving – even while being retrofitted for the school safety measures which reflect a new order in Appalachia and America.
There were roofs covered by worn-out shingles that were longer manufactured, even.
And concrete walls with a bunker-thickness of 4 feet – which didn’t make for easy drilling, as the county found out in the 1990s when the first of Marion’s schools were being wired for the internet.
Schools built to last – but not evolve.
Right before his SBA appointment, he oversaw a turf-replacement project at the aforementioned East-West Stadium and the installation of a 10-lane track at North Marion High School.
Since taking over, he’s visited 38 of West Virginia’s 55 public school districts, meeting with superintendents and teachers, while touring the buildings where all the learning and lesson plans commence daily.
The road trips have given him an even greater respect for those advancing education in the Mountain State, he said.
“All our counties are all just a little bit different from one another,” the SBA leader said.
“But they’ve all got people doing their best work for our kids.”
