Fauquier residents will vote Tuesday on whether to take on $39 million in debt to build a third high school -- an issue that has riven the county for months.
The referendum would authorize construction of a 1,200-seat school in New Baltimore. Officials have said they would use an additional $11 million from other sources, bringing the project's total cost to about $50 million.
Proponents of the school argue that it is desperately needed to relieve crowding at Fauquier and Liberty high schools and that only by voting yes now can voters ensure that the school would be completed in time to open in 2007. Opponents say that the school's design is extravagant and costly, and that the site preferred by the School Board, on Route 605, would create too much traffic on what they describe as a hilly and dangerous road.
Both sides have organized campaigns, complete with Web sites and signs posted around the county. They have filled public hearings on the topic as well as the letters to the editor pages of local newspapers.
Barred by law from taking a stand on the bond, Superintendent J. David Martin said he has been trying to educate voters about the issue and let them make up their own minds. He and his staff have attended dozens of community meetings on the topic, sometimes as many as four a night. "We want the voters to be informed," he said.
Although growth has come far more slowly to Fauquier than Loudoun County, its neighbor to the north, Martin said development has arrived and brought new students who need classroom seats.
School officials say more than 1,700 students now attend Fauquier High School, which was opened in 1963 to accommodate no more than 1,487. Liberty, opened 11 years ago, has 1,654 students -- 200 more than its designed capacity. Without a new school, Martin said, the school system would have to add to the 28 trailers already in use at the two sites or educate students in two shifts a day. Neither option, he said, would create "the best learning environment."
The design for the new school includes an array of athletic fields, a television production studio and a student greenhouse, similar to facilities that exist or will soon be added to the other two high schools, Martin said. Construction costs are in line with new high schools built around the state, he said.
Critics, however, argue that the school is far too expensive, likening it to an Olympic athletic facility. They fear property taxes will rise significantly to operate the new building and to pay off the debt from its construction.
They have also questioned tactics used by the school system, including a recent meeting at which Martin told parents that the athletic fields and other design elements were required by state regulations. Later, Martin said he had been mistaken -- the regulations he had cited were from a non-mandatory guidance document issued by the state Board of Education in the late 1980s.
"We have a huge school they want to build, based on requirements that are nonexistent," said Linda Lawler, who lives between Warrenton and Marshall and who is pushing for the bond's defeat. She works with a group called Fauquier Citizens for Prudent Spending. "All this is in a high school. It's just a very extravagant design."
Martin said the school system always viewed the 1980s state guidelines as the minimum needed for a proper instructional program.
Lawler said opponents were also concerned about the 75-acre site proffered by a local developer, where school officials have said they would like to build the school. She said she was convinced that if the referendum passes, the school will be built on the site, despite community opposition. Those advocating the bond's passage argue that the county Board of Supervisors must still approve rezoning for the parcel, a process that will include public hearings.
"If you don't have the funding, you're dead in the water," said Don Rose, who is urging county residents to approve the referendum. "If there is disagreement about the size or the location, you can work on those issues after you get the funding in place."
Rose is one of several residents who have organized the Fauquier Alliance for Better Schools, a registered state political action committee advocating for the high school and, he said, better education in Fauquier in the future. Rose donated $20,000 to the group.
"There are people who say, 'These people who move in here, they bring their kids and now they expect me to pay taxes to build a school?' " said Rose, who has lived in Fauquier for 20 years. "The reality is this. . . . It's our responsibility, whether we like it or not, to provide the means for them to get an education."
