Poor student performance has been the topic de jure for the Alamance-Burlington school system ever since a statewide report card earlier this month put ABSS in the bottom fifth of the state’s 115 public school systems for achievement on standardized tests.
Yet it wasn’t falling test scores so much as falling concrete that held the attention of Alamance County’s leaders on Monday when they had their first chance to publicly confront anyone from the school system since the lackluster report from the state.
The county’s board of commissioners ultimately heard several maintenance-related requests that evening from Greg Hook, the school system’s chief operations officer – whose presentation featured a particularly evocative plea about the 63-year-old network of concrete canopies at Graham High School.
Hook told the county’s governing board that the metal supports for these canopies have become so rusted and worn over time that chunks of concrete are literally dropping off of the structures.
“The rebar is rusting, and as the rebar rusts, it pushes away the concrete,” the school system’s COO elaborated. “And students and staff are walking around underneath.”
Hook shared some illustrative photos of the damage as well as some of the actual concrete chips that have dribbled down from the canopies.
Hook went on to seek permission to use $1.4 million from the school system’s share of the state’s lottery proceeds to replace the entire network of covered walkways. According to the school system’s COO, this work will begin in early December and proceed incrementally while school isn’t in session – with the goal of having everything finished by August of 2026.
The commissioners voted 5-to-0 to release the requested funds.
The commissioners also gave a similarly unanimous nod to five applications that would enable the school system to seek “needs-based” grants for projects that are already on its institutional to-do list.
Hook said that one of grants would, if approved, provide $2.8 million for a roof replacement at Southern Middle School while the other four could collectively yield up to $12.1 million for various HVAC upgrades.
In each case, the county would have to chip in a 25 percent match – amounting to $700,000 for the roof replacement and just over $3 million for the HVAC work. Hook added, however, that the county’s capital improvement plan already has $1.1 million budgeted for the Southern Middle School roof and $3.7 million for various HVAC projects. The county would consequently be left with roughly $1.1 million in the kitty even if all of the grants are approved.
The potential mathematical advantage of these grants seemed obvious enough to Steve Carter, the vice chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners.
“If we could get these that would be a real savings for the citizens of Alamance County,” Carter declared before the 5-to-0 vote in support of the grant applications.
In the end, the commissioners didn’t devote any time during their meeting on Monday to the school system’s dismal academic performance. Their chairman, John Paisley, Jr., nevertheless said that he had offered Sandy Ellington-Graves, his counterpart on the local school board, an opportunity to address this very issue that evening. Paisley added that Ellington-Graves had opted to make this report in October since the superintendent was unavailable to address the commissioners this week.
