Prince William County 13th high school: What will it look like? Where will it be?

 

Prince William County plans to open its 13th high school within five years.

The school division has three-and-a-half months to get a final location and design approved to stay on schedule.

The first of two community input meetings was held Monday night at Battlefield High School in Haymarket. The 13th high school, if opened as planned in fall 2020, would help alleviate overcrowding at Battlefield, Patriot, and Stonewall Jackson Senior high schools in Prince William.

The county’s 12th high school, Charles J. Colgan High School on Hoadly Road near Woodbridge will include the much debated $11 million aquatics facility, and will open fall 2016.

The Stonehaven site 

The school division has two locations available for the 13th high school. The first is on land in a proposed development in the Linton Hall Road corridor called Stonehaven. An 85-acre school site — large enough to accommodate the school building and all traditional sports and practice fields — was proffered to the county by the housing developer in exchange for a land rezoning that would allow the company to construct 1,006 homes.

The Prince William County Board of Supervisors deferred a vote on the Stonehaven rezoning last fall leaving the future of the 13th high school site uncertain.

Prince Wiliam County Public Schools Associate Superintendent David Cline told the nearly 20 residents at the presentation Monday that the division is in need of the new school because enrollment in Prince William – now at 87,000 students — continues to grow about 800 per year.

“This is a sensitive and sometimes political topic,” said Cline. 

The Rollins Ford site

With the Stonehaven site uncertain, Prince William County Supervisors Jeanine Lawson and Peter Candland last month offered a 69-acre site off Rollins Ford Road. The land was proffered to Prince William County to be used as a park, and the county has already spent about $4 million to develop the new park. 

The school division must reimburse Prince William County that cash if the site is used for the 13th high school. And the school division must give up 60 acres of land — dubbed the Avondale school site near the intersection of Route 28 and Vint Hill Road – where a new elementary and middle school is slated to be built.

The Avondale site would become the site for a new community park, and would be built next to the Grizzly Sports Complex. If the Rollins Ford site is chosen, that leaves the school division searching for new sites for a new elementary and middle schools at the cost of about $10 million.

The Rollins Ford school site also comes with more complications than the Stonehaven site. The soils at the site are not suitable for construction and would have to be dug up and replaced with new soil at a cost of $1 million. The site in the rural crescent — an area largely devoid of water and sewer connections — must also be placed on public sewer if the school is built there.

“We’re still compiling the engineering data on what it would take to do that, but it’s not a small feat,” said Prince William County Public Schools facilities chief Dave Beavers.

School officials don’t yet have an estimated cost for a water and sewer extension that would pipe in from a nearby residential subdivision.

The Rollins Ford school site is not large enough to accommodate all of the practice fields needed for the high school. The school could be built on site without the usual fields, or the school division could spend upward of $2 million more for additional land for the fields. In all, it could cost at least $16 million to address the initial issues with the Rollins Ford site. 

The site could also be impacted by new power lines planned by Dominion.

“I want the site that is going to get us a school built on time.” said Gainesville School Board Representative Alyson Satterwhite. “I think that if we were to going the Rollins Ford park direction, Stonehaven might be interested in offering us a middle school site. That’s my personal opinion.”

How should the new school be built? 

The Prince William County School Board must also decide how to build the new school.

Two prototypes for the new building are under consideration: a school modeled after Patriot High School in Nokesville and the new Colgan High opening next year, and a model based on Battlefield High School in Haymarket and Freedom High School in Woodbridge.

Nearly all who spoke Monday night argued for the more updated “Patriot” model due to its more modern layout, larger classrooms and open space, and wide windows to allow for more natural light.

Colgan High School will open next year with a final price tag of $111 million, including the aquatics facility. Without it the pool, the price tag is about $90 million.

If the more than 20-year-old Battlefield design is chosen, originally used in Prince William for the design of C.D. Hylton High School which opened in 1991, originally Beavers said it must be brought up to current-day building codes. No matter which design is chosen, the new school could wind up costing about $10 to $15 million more than the $90 million cost of the 12th high school due to increased construction costs, said Beavers.

“This is a no-brainer,” said Jeff Smith, who said he anticipates his children will someday attend the new school when it opens. “It seems pretty clear to me you take the site that doesn’t cost anything” Instead of taking the site that costs $16 million, and you take the money you save to build a better school. I don’t even know why you present a design that was used 20 years ago.”

School Board Chairman candidate Tracy Conroy argues the school system should focus on building new schools at a lower cost, faster, to accommodate the growing student population.

“Looking at the 2005 [Prince William County Public Schools Capital Improvement Plan], it had the high school we’re talking about tonight opening in 2014. It had Colgan [High School] open in 2012, and Patriot [High School open] in 2009. None of those was open on time, and [the need for these schools was] based off of student projections,” said Conroy. “So we spend most of our time saying this is a problem with developers and the county. However, in 2005 we knew these homes were coming, and we projected to build what was needed.”

Beavers said the schools did not open late but opened as planned due to budget and circumstances that changed over time. The school division is on track to present their recommendations to the School Board in three weeks. The School Board must make a decision on the new site by January to stay on track to open the new school in 2020.

A second community input meeting will be held at Patriot High School tomorrow September 23 at 7 p.m. in Nokesville.