Will Poquoson’s leaky middle school fall to consolidation – Daily Press

Walking the halls of Poquoson Middle School was a trip down memory lane for many of the people who toured the building after a joint meeting between the School Board and City Council Tuesday night.

They had walked these halls as preteens or teenagers some when the building was still the high school.

City Attorney D. Wayne Moore pointed out the old band room and a space under the current music room risers that once contained locker room showers. He drew laughs when he said he drove the school bus in high school, making a handsome wage for a teenager in the late 1950s.

Despite the light feel around the tour, its subject was a pending decision that Mayor Gene Hunt said would shape the citys education for a generation. It might be the most important work that we as School Board members have ever accomplished on our term, added School Board Chair Steven Kast.

At Tuesdays meeting, the council and the board reopened discussions of school consolidation, going over the enrollment decline the schools have faced for years, the shrinking of state funding and some infrastructure challenges in the school buildings.

Hunt implored the council and the board to approach the consolidation discussions with an open mind. He said the primary driver of any decision should be doing whats best for students, adding that any money saved by consolidating would stay in the schools.

Since 2006, Poquoson school enrollment has dropped by 522 students. The enrollment in fall 2016 was 2,080, leaving the school 649 students short of its functional capacity. Superintendent Jennifer Parish noted that the enrollment and capacity gap is distributed across the citys four schools.

She also went over declining state funding and the city having to meet the schools funding gaps, increasing its contribution year to year. Kast said the state does not provide money for capital projects, leaving the burden of construction on the city.

In 2012, a consolidation committee appointed by the School Board decided against closing any of the citys four schools but said the city and schools should revisit the discussion in 2016 if enrollment decline continued. The committee said Poquoson Primary School made the most sense to close because it could be used for other purposes for some financial gain and made for the easiest instructional transition.

Parish outlined a 2012 facility study by school staff and a contractor that offered several possibilities for the middle school, ranging from fixing it up to demolishing it and building a new one.

The contractor listed the architectural and mechanical work the building needed. The contractor found the school had undergone 11 phases of work, leading to some disjointed operating systems, like running about a dozen different HVAC systems. The contractor said despite renovations and additions, much of the building was out of date, adding that the schools out-of-date systems were grandfathered due to age and were not up to current code.

Steve Pappas, the schools executive operations director, led the tour of the middle school, highlighting signs of age and patchwork repairs.

(Aileen Devlin/Daily Press) /

School Board, City Council and school division and city staff members look over an out dated music room during a tour of Poquoson Middle School on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2017. Poquoson Middle is the oldest school in the city and is being considered for closing the school because of declining enrollment, down by about 500 in 10 year.

School Board, City Council and school division and city staff members look over an out dated music room during a tour of Poquoson Middle School on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2017. Poquoson Middle is the oldest school in the city and is being considered for closing the school because of declining enrollment, down by about 500 in 10 year. ((Aileen Devlin/Daily Press) /)

In the auditorium, he stood by a pillar that was warped from moisture with paint bearing scars of water damage. He took the group upstairs to one of the biggest rooms in the school what Moore said was the old band room and said the room only had two electric outlets. Lack of connectivity in some places inhibits the use of new technology in classes, Parish said.

Down the hall, Pappas pointed out a window to the other second floor across the roof the two upstairs wings arent connected, but were different additions made over the years. And even though there are two second floors, the building has no elevators.

In one utility room of pipes and electrical panels, Pappas showed a line about four cinder blocks tall the high water mark from Hurricane Isabel. Some electrical panels in the room were lower than the water line. In an outdoor utility room, Pappas invited the group to look up at a gash in the roof through which you could clearly see the sky.

He pointed out a computer lab as one of the lowest rooms in building. He said they stack all the equipment any time a big storm is expected. The room was also cooled by a window air conditioning unit, a sign of the disparate HVAC systems.

The shop class area showed a different sort of HVAC a piece of machinery hanging from the ceiling that looked like some antique car part. Pappas said hot water runs through it, and a fan blows out the heated air.

Toward the end of the tour, as if on cue, a leak sprung as Pappas passed through a first-floor doorway.

Kast said the School Board hopes to make a consolidation recommendation to the City Council in November. Hunt said he hopes the council can make a final decision in December.

Reyes can be reached by phone at 757-247-4692. Follow him on Twitter @jdauzreyes.

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Will Poquoson's leaky middle school fall to consolidation - Daily Press