FAYETTEVILLE, W.Va. — The state School Building Authority is hoping a community meeting in Fayetteville Thursday night will help provide some direction for Fayette County’s struggling school system.
SBA Executive Director David Sneed said there’s a tentative plan in place.
“We’ve created a process, it’ll go over the next several months. We want to sit down with the community, we’d like to get everyone engaged including the Fayette County Board of Education,” Sneed said. “We’ve created a committee that every school will be represented.”
Sneed said the cost of bringing deteriorating facilities up to current standards would be examined, but pointed out that there was no overnight solution.
“With limited SBA funding and very limited local funding, it’s just not going to happen,” Sneed said. “This is probably a $150 million problem now that we’re going to have to just start one thing at a time and try to resolve as many things as we can as soon as we can.”
Over 25 years, issues had not been dealt with, and now problems are spiraling out of control, Sneed said.
“Buildings are being closed because of structural issues. Just the systems are breaking down, and they’ve reached a tipping point here because things haven’t been done over the last 25 years,” he said.
The meeting will be more general, with specific details coming later on, said Sneed.
“Really all we’re going to talk about is the process we’re going to use, and what we hope to accomplish. Later on, we’ll be having some meetings where each community has their representatives and there will be opportunity for more input.”
At the end last year, the SBA rejected a multi-year funding plan for school construction projects in Fayette County.
The meeting is at 6 p.m. Thursday at Fayetteville High School.