Hoping to strengthen the county’s position and avoid a scene that happened elsewhere in WNC, on Monday night the Macon County Board of Education unanimously approved a memorandum of understanding to support the $60 million Needs-Based Public School grant application for the Franklin High School project.
The MOU came about by request of Board Chair Jim Breedlove, who said he discussed it with a county commissioner and another person recently, not naming either during the meeting.
Breedlove said this would signal unity after what he called “a black eye for Western North Carolina” a few months ago in Cherokee County. In that county, the commissioners declined the $50 million it received to consolidate its three high schools.
In September 2022, Cherokee County was approved for the full $50 million Needs-Based Public School grant to consolidate Murphy, Hiwassee Dam and Andrews high schools, all built in the 1950s, into one new school. After the November 2022 election and one week after the lame-duck Cherokee County commissioners authorized the required $2.5 million match grant, the newly elected Cherokee County commissioners voted to withdraw the authorization. According to The Cherokee Scout, the Cherokee County School Board and Cherokee County Commissioners couldn’t agree on a new plan, and the money was officially turned down on Jan. 4.
“It was shown that if this board along with the commissioners would, in essence, go through to the MOU, where we’re saying if we get it, the projects would move forward, that would be very helpful in terms of securing the grant,” Breedlove said.
Macon County came in 11th in the September 2022 grant application process. The top nine applications, including Cherokee County, were awarded funding. Superintendent Chris Baldwin pointed out, previous grant award winners can’t apply again for three years, theoretically upping the chances for the FHS project.
“Bluntly, I hope I’m not speaking out of turn, but I’m very, very optimistic that we’re gonna get this grant if we show our support for it on both our side and the commissioners’ side,” Breedlove said.
The grant award will likely be upped from $50 million to $60 million for a new high school facility in the new state budget. That budget is likely to be approved in June.
Breedlove had board attorney John Henning draft an MOU, presenting it to the board for the first time Monday night. Baldwin said the contractors, LS3P, are writing most of the grant application and they are “intimately aware” of what is needed for the project to score well with the state.
Board Member Hilary Wilkes worried that getting the application would diminish the scope of the FHS project. As of January, the project was scaled down to $100 million from the previous estimate of $118 million by “eliminating redundancies,” as LS3P’s Paul Boney put it. Baldwin said Monday night his last update was that the project estimate is at $106 million, but that there’s no nailed-down number. Boney previously said he would have a new estimate for the county commissioners by either June or July.
“I don’t want to receive a grant of $60 million and then the scope of the project shrunk to fit that,” Wilkes said, adding that she approved of the MOU idea.
Henning said this MOU would essentially say “we’re working together to build the high school that needs to be built to accommodate a replacement building and serve the need for the replacement building.” Henning said he can add that the county has received estimates of over $100 million.
In other news from the Monday meeting, which took place at Nantahala School, the swearing-in ceremony for new superintendent Josh Lynch is scheduled for Tuesday, June 13, at 9 a.m. Lynch cannot attend the June 26 school board meeting. Lynch’s first day in office will be July 1, the start of the 2023-24 fiscal year. Baldwin is retiring effective Sept. 1.
The board also approved the transfer of Brian Moffitt from principal of Macon Early College to Union Academy.