Jackson Free Press

The Jackson City Council is frustrated and looking for answers as to why new schools aren't being built two years after Jacksonians agreed to up their taxes to finance the construction.

Their mounting impatience is easy to understand. A $150 million bond plan involved renovation and additions to eight city schools, and three new schools to house the city's swelling student population, but so far, nobody's seeing any new structures go up.

Council President Leslie McLemore and others are looking for someone to blame, though school officials say exploding costs have made the $150 million price tag that everybody agreed upon too low to accomplish all that was proposed to taxpayers when they voted to approve the project.

The thing is, schools aren't made of 2-by-4s and vinyl siding. They're made of steel, which is growing in price thanks to fierce international competition and the unavoidable price of oil—making it expensive to even sneeze. Welcome to the New World of Finite Resources. Now projects, such as the renovation work at Barr Elementary and Blackburn Elementary, are more expensive than originally planned, so the board has to find a way to cut corners. Board members are considering the possibility of combining Barr and Pointdexter Elementary Schools into one large facility, or pledging the energy savings garnered through energy-efficient savings to deficit reduction.

In the meantime, council members say Barr and Blackburn's problems shouldn't affect other aspects of the project—such as new school construction in north and south Jackson—but it has to. You can't move forward with two $18 million schools and one $10 million school while you've got holes in the planned renovations at Blackburn and Barr. When the new schools are finished, the district will find that there isn't enough money left to address the Barr and Blackburn shortfalls. The JPS board can't just write off those two inner-city schools. Voters served by those schools also approved the bond issue.

We don't envy the tough decisions the board has to make. Downsizing the new schools to cut costs could mean opening more portable classrooms less than two years after the new school comes online, but slicing away at renovations in the older districts will make voters in those areas feel cheated.

The city must find a solution that does not favor one area over another.