The state School Building Authority played Grinch to the Monongalia County Board of Education’s Christmas on Tuesday.
That was when the SBA denied the BOE’s request to help fund a renovation project at Ridgedale Elementary School.
No matter, though, Mon Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said.
Because just as Christmas did in Dr. Seuss’s Grinch tale, the Ridgedale work will keep coming, no matter what.
The board now will pick up the full check for the work, Campbell said.
“We’re fortunate to be positioned to assume the project’s costs,” the superintendent said.
From its headquarters in Charleston, the SBA plays both Santa and the Grinch to West Virginia’s 55 public school districts, as it doles out dollars for new buildings and other infrastructure projects.
The SBA was asked for help on the second phase of proposed work at the school on Goshen Road.
Ground was broken this fall on the first phase of the project, which includes the addition of eight classrooms.
Mon’s BOE was already covering the $4.2 million price tag for that work.
The request the SBA turned down was for an additional $4.8 million, which would cover expansions to the parking lot and a more secure entry to the building, in keeping with the Safe Schools Act.
The BOE will now assume that cost as well.
In terms of infrastructure, Ridgedale is already assuming the cost, as it were, of Mon’s relative success.
The county is enjoying prosperity — while a lot of the state isn’t.
Prosperity means population growth in a state that has seen declines for years.
Ridgedale was built in 1954, when Goshen Road was lined by mostly farmland.
Today, the area is especially fertile to subdivisions — which usually mean families and school-age children.
The Harvest Ridge development, which is in Ridgedale’s attendance area, has twice as many homes as it did nine years ago.
“People aren’t leaving,” Ridgedale Principal Sheri Petitte said.
“They’re coming in. That’s great for us, but we have to be able to serve our students.”
Monongalia was among 26 county boards of education requesting money from the SBA for its 2020 funding cycle.
The SBA has $27.9 million in coffers for this cycle. Requests this year totaled $130 million.
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