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Politics & Government

School board holds off on cuts

Dunwoody High School renovations will stay on track for now

The DeKalb school board has delayed a move to cut millions from school construction improvements, which means that the cuts proposed for Dunwoody High School, Peachtree Middle School, and Vanderlyn and Chesnut elementary schools are off for now.

The board moved Monday to roll hundreds of projects into a new sales tax that starts in July to cover an estimated $37-million deficit discovered weeks ago.

That is, if it can. The district will investigate whether it's legal to fund the deficit with the upcoming Special Purpose Option Local Sales tax, the district's fourth. Called SPLOST 4, the voter-approved tax outlines specific new projects it would pay for.

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Nancy Jester, Dunwoody's representative on the school board, said that the district will be looking at a five-page list of school projects item by item to see which projects might be covered by the upcoming tax. The new SPLOST specifies a pot of money that is flexible and may be used to cover at least part of the deficit, she said.

"That was sort of the discussion," she said. "The (tax) has some general language, we know there's a catch-all in there."

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That news could be good for local schools. District representatives were originally considering funding the school projects with the new tax - but then putting current projects at the end of the five-year tax, which concludes in 2017.

That kind of change to the SPLOST would hit Dunwoody High School hard. The school is finishing a massive renovation, but needs more than $1.1 million from the district to finish it. Items like student and teacher desks, whiteboards in classrooms, new carpet in the orchestra room, and paving in the parking lot are all yet to be completed.

The school has received assurances from the district that specific classroom upgrades will be completed regardless of the outcome of the SPLOST discussion, Jester said.

For instance, whiteboards were removed from some DHS classrooms during the renovations and then never replaced. Those basic, common-sense items shouldn't be tied to the tax schedule, Jester said. It's a matter of the district putting the finishing touches on jobs it contracted out and has already paid for, she said.

"I think the classroom (funding) issues are now fixed," she said. "Whether or not the whole ball of wax is finished in SPLOST 4."

While there are no specific assurances for other schools in the Dunwoody cluster, several projects will move ahead for now.

The largest is a $250,000 district promise to replace an aging track at Peachtree Middle School that was damaged by construction work at the school.

Vanderlyn has $313,000 scheduled for heating and air conditioning improvements, and Chesnut has $434,000 in American with Disabilites Act improvements scheduled.Β 

The district found the nearly $37 million shortfall as the current SPLOST comes to a close. District officials have said that $21 million, the bulk of the shortfall, stemmed from the district's failure to account for enough interest on a $300-million loan that was executed in 2007, when the tax began.

At Monday night's meeting, Jester told district financial officials that the board had not been given the full details of the district's debt service on construction projects. That changed in February after the deficit was found.

The district might take a more straightforward approach to financing in the upcoming SPLOST. Cheryl Atkinson, the new superintendent, said that the district could rely less on loans and avoid the financing costs in the next SPLOST.

The money saved could then be used to pay for projects that are now on the chopping block. The district is is scheduled to report back to the board on the matter.

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