Funding a new Dean elementary: ‘They need to do their job and allow us to do our job’

Manassas needs a new Jennie Dean Elementary School; City Council and School Board at odds on funding it

MANASSAS — Jennie Dean Elementary School is 82 years old and not getting any younger.

With aging infrastructure requiring frequent repairs and a rapidly increasing student body, Manassas’ City Council and School Board are struggling to reach a funding agreement for a new school.

The cost of tearing down the old school at the intersection of Wellington Road and Prince William Street in Manassas and constructing a new, expanded building on the land requires roughly $30 million — a tall order for a city with one of the highest tax rates in the state.

“The building is old, children deserve a better building than that,” School Board member Tim Demeria told Potomac Local.

Several studies have concluded that the building’s age and limited capacity would make renovation ineffective in the long term, according to Almeta Radford, director of public communications for Manassas City Public Schools. The school “is past its useful life and should be replaced,” she said.

In 2015 the School Board hired Citigate GIS, a consulting firm, to determine the needs of the school division through 2030 and they found that replacing Dean Elementary with a “Dean Intermediate School” of approximately 140,000 feet would yield the best results.

Radford said that waiting will only compound the situation.

“The cost to replace Jennie Dean will never be cheaper than right now,” she said. “The longer we wait, the more expensive it will be and the more costly the repairs will be to maintain an outdated Dean.”

The other pressing issue is the size of the student body, which has followed a consistent trend of yearly increase.

“Manassas City Public Schools student enrollment has continued to increase at a rate of approximately 1.5% annually and is projected to do so for the foreseeable future,” Radford noted. “Student enrollment growth is primarily in the elementary grade levels.”

If that population trend continues, students will need to be placed in trailer classrooms. Demeria sees that happening within the next two to three years.

“But we don’t want to do that,” Demeria added. “Trailers become an added expense of their own. Would we rather spend money on trailers or on a new building?”

In addition to the expense, trailers come with a host of other issues that impact student life. They typically do not include bathrooms, and they take up space on school grounds otherwise used for practice areas and extracurricular activities Security procedures to get students back and forth from the main building to trailers are also an issue, officials say.

The City Council and School Board Finance Committees have been meeting since May 2018 to establish a new funding agreement for the School Board, covering the replacement of Dean Elementary.

December 10th’s school funding proposal — which would have continued an annual 2.56 percent funding increase yearly over the next three years — was struck down in a 4 to 2 vote.

As of now, the City is still working on a funding agreement with the School Board, but if the Council comes back with a number the School Board deems insufficient, they will not be able to move forward.

In addition to the school situation, the Council must also think about funds for things like fire and rescue services and street upkeep. Manassas’ increasing tax rate is also a source of concern for some councilmembers.

Some proposals have included stipulations on where the money goes to, but Demeria said these are frustrating to the School Board.

In one of the previous funding drafts, funds were compartmentalized to go to other areas, such as debt service. “I had a problem with that,” he said. “The City Council needs to allocate a lump sum and allow the elected School Board to do our job.”

“We are both elected officials,” Demeria said. “We’re elected to run the schools, they’re elected to fund the schools. They need to do their job and allow us to do our job.”

Demeria said that the School Board has been very fiscally responsible over the years, despite challenges. “When I started on the Board twelve years ago, we received more money from the City per student than we do today,” he noted.

The Board has had an average increase of one and a half percent per year, and with that increase, “we’ve built Mayfield [Intermediate School], built Baldwin [Elementary and Intermediate schools], added on to Haydon [Elementary school], built Gillum Fields, maintained all of our schools and buses, brought our teacher salaries up to par with Prince William County — all on a percent and a half per year.” “We’ve been very fiscally responsible and we should be treated that way and allowed to make the decisions that are in the best interests of our children,” he said.

The School Board has provided revenue estimates for the foreseeable future to City Council for review and is working with the City Manager to determine tax consequences.