Richmond County Schools acquires the James Building from RCC; Satterfield, Baldwin vote against the motion

HAMLET — Richmond County Schools acquired the James Building from Richmond Community College at their November meeting.

The Richmond County Board of Education voted 5-2 to acquire the building; board members Cory Satterfield and Scotty Baldwin voted against the motion.

Richmond County Schools currently uses the James Building, which was built in 1966, as office space for six pre-K staff, 12 Exceptional Children’s staff, six tech facilitators and as a STEM lab.

Executive Director of Auxiliary Services Melvin Ingram detailed that only a portion of the first floor is currently ADA accessible. EC staff use that level for pre-K testing. The second floor and basement are used for office and classroom space, as well as RCC storage.

“School psychologists and behavior specialists work in all schools but are based in the James Building,” Ingram said, adding that where the pre-K staff was previously housed did not have enough adequate space.

Ingram said that per the building inspector, the James Building would be grandfathered in for many of the ADA requirements, although cautioned that the first floor bathrooms would need to be redone at a cost between $50,000 and $90,000. It’s not expected that an elevator would need to be installed at a cost of $250,000, although security cameras would most likely be added to the building for $1,000. No major upgrades would be needed unless the space is converted for student space as opposed to office space.

The roof of the James Building was replaced 15 years ago, and the ten-ton HVAC unit was installed three years ago. The combined current cost of custodian and landscaping maintenance is $7,000, and yearly utility fees are about $13,000.

A facility-use survey was sent to each of the schools in Richmond County. Ingram said that seven responses indicated that there was some available space in their respective schools, but none were sufficient to the space currently provided by the James Building.

“Storage is a major issue in all of our schools,” Ingram said, adding that the James Building allows for a communal space for collaboration for the 24 staff members situated there.

Maintenance Director Steven King said he did not see any mold in the building during a walk-through, although there is some moisture in the sub-terrain basement.

“We often find between my specialists and psychologists, there is no place for them to work [in the schools]” said EC Director Dana Mintmier in an address to the board. “They have no available space to test kids.”

Mintmier said that proper testing can’t be done in the conference rooms of various schools, and that every Wednesday, the James Building serves as a meeting area for her staff.

“Our pre-K program is growing astronomically,” Mintmier said. “We did 180 assessments last year. I have 45 kids that came into Kindergarten this year with an IEP. I have to have somewhere for our pre-K to work and test kids as well as serve kids. I ask that you keep that in mind as you move forward and make a decision.”

“Pre-K has got to be expanded,” chairman Wiley Mabe would later state in agreement. “We got a waiting list that won’t give up.”

Board member Ronald Tillman asked what long term plans there are for creating extra space for support personnel in Richmond County Schools.

Superintendent Dr. Joe Ferrell said that the timing of this opportunity to acquire the James Building is “unfortunate,” since immediate action is required and there will be a future proposal at the December school board meeting for a facility and capacity study across the district to determine available and potential space that could be utilized. The results of that study, if approved in December and started in January, would not be available until April or May.

“I think we’re all in agreement that it would be better to have our ninth grade students at Richmond Senior High School. That’s kind of been the plan all along,” Dr. Ferrell said, adding that they currently have a committee with future meetings scheduled regarding how this change could best be enacted.

“Right now, I can’t say exactly what the plan will be as far as ‘Will we move Ninth Grade to Richmond Senior High School? Certainly we want to do that, but then we have to consider what do we do with the current Night Grade Academy building.. Well I know the talk has been [moving[ Monroe Avenue [students there.] So if we do that, we will look at what we do with the Monroe Avenue building. Well that also begs the question, ‘Do you do any redistricting or do you just take the Monroe Avenue student body and plop them into the Ninth Grade Academy building with the lines still the same?’ There are a lot of unanswered questions that this facility capacity study will bring to us.”

“I think we’re putting the cart before the horse,” Satterfield said. “We’re getting ready to probably have a facility that will be open and newer than 1966 in less than a year. And we can scramble around for a little while to make things work before we get into a whole nother building. We can do that. We all know that Richmond County has lost a lot of students over the last 20 years. We haven’t lost any buildings. There’s got to be space in the buildings.”

Satterfield, a former RSHS principal, shares that he knows that school personnel are reluctant to offer up any available space for non-school employees, but that he believes the space is there to temporarily accommodate the additional staff.

“I think we already have older buildings and we don’t need another one,” Satterfield said. “If we’re to be a good steward of tax-payers money, we can save a lot of money by doing away with all that stuff…that we’re paying for now. We’re paying for the cleaning, electricity, [at the James Building] we can save that money.”

“Really?” responded Mabe. “And you’re going to take 24 employees and going to shot gun them out around the county and pat them on the back say ‘We did the best we could, and we could have got this over here for no additional expense to use until we could do better?”

“I think we can make things work for a short amount of time,” Satterfield said.

“That’s great, I don’t,” Mabe curtly responded.

Board member Daryl Mason said he does not want to make the collaboration for the EC department more difficult by uprooting their space at the James Building.

“I’m fine with putting them in a space, but I still think that space needs to be able to house as many of the 24 people…” Mason said. “They have a lot of important work to do and they have to be able to meet and talk and work together. I don’t think it’s going to benefit us to take that EC program and scatter them out through the county and think they’re going to be as effective as they need to be… I just know that department is very important to us.”

The superintendent subsequently confirmed with Ingram that there is not a single space currently in the county that would accommodate all of the current occupants of the James Building.

A motion was brought forth for RCS to acquire the James Building from RCC. Five of the board members raised their hand in agreement; Satterfield and Baldwin voted in opposition of the acquisition.