If you want to soup up the ride, you have to pay for the parts.
That’s essentially what Monongalia County Board of Education members were saying last week as they heard the first preliminary budget numbers for the Renaissance Academy.
The Renaissance Academy is the name of the standalone STEM school (science, technology, engineering and math) the district wants to have open to students by 2027.
John Chadwick, an architect and administrator who is overseeing the project by the DLR Group, the firm that is designing and building the academy, said right now the price tag is in the $125 million range, counting site preparation and other costs.
Access roads need to be built for the academy’s planned campus, which is on a rise of reclaimed land in Cassville that would put the facility in full view of motorists tooling along nearby Interstate 79.
It’s not the glimpses that people will see from the highway, Chadwick said, although he wants to be a compelling visual.
The real impression, he said, will come from what actually ensues under the terraced roofs (their design will flow with the topography), as students from Mon’s three public high schools show up for the learning.
Look for current offerings at MTEC, the Monongalia County Technical Education Center on Mississippi Street, to find a new, enhanced home at the academy.
“Enhanced,” both Chadwick and Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said, in that the academy will offer deeper dives into those career technical education offerings – with greater space and learning labs enthused with the latest technology employed by high-tech operations.
Which looks great on a handout or PowerPoint, Jennifer Hagerty said.
However, the board member, who is in the middle of her first term and spent more than two decades in education as a teacher and school administrator, couldn’t help wondering if some of METC’s proven offerings would go away in the transition.
“We aren’t talking about cutting programs?” she asked Campbell.
“We’re not talking about cutting programs,” came the reply.
MTEC’s current offerings, Campbell said, aren’t simply being shifted to a new facility.
However, he said, like a skinny freshman going out for football and hitting the weight room, those programs will pack on more muscle in the new school.
And other new, directed offerings will follow, the superintendent said, with employment trends and other economic mileposts marking the road.
“At the outset, we want to maintain the programs we have,” Campbell said, “but we want to raise the level of technology these kids are going to be experiencing.”
Those levels of technology, plus the more advanced textbook courses that will go with it, are what Nancy Walker, a longtime BOE incumbent is emphasizing when people in the community ask her about it, she said.
With the Renaissance Academy, she said, there will no longer be the old separation of “vo-tech” kids putting their core classes at their respective high schools on hold while missing out on extracurricular offerings while studying and training at another facility.
The goal of the STEM school, she said, is to get everybody in there, so they explore what’s out there.
“This is an ‘every high school student opportunity,’ so they can grow their mindset.” Walker said.
“I keep trying to say to folks, ‘This is for everyone.’”
Initial investment …
Something for everyone, though, doesn’t come cheap. That’s why Walker was alluding to the sticker-shock factor.
Mon taxpayers, already generous at the polls with their traditionally affirmative votes for the district’s excess education levy, will be asked to pony up for another bond in the upcoming May primary – which The Dominion Post will explore in a future article.
BOE President Ron Lytle, meanwhile, said he’d “willingly” pay an extra tax assessment to fund the Renaissance Academy.
Such a place for learning, he said, would make the grade for a whole region.
The STEM school, the president said, would have a built-in pipeline, supplying a highly workforce to existing industries here.
Putting the school here, he added, just might inspire new employers looking for a place to move in, also.
“It gives our kids a chance to dream,” he said. “And it’s gonna change Monongalia County and north-central West Virgina.”
