Funding for expansions to Brentwood and Page High and Middle Schools gained the first of several necessary approvals on Monday.
The county commission’s education committee approved $21.1 million of funds, $4.9 million for Page and $17.2 million for Brentwood. The funding request still needs Budget Committee approval and to then be approved by the whole commission on May 8.
Page
Page, the Williamson County School District has made clear, is perhaps the school most immediately in need of relief.
The expansion project will increase capacity by 600 in middle and 1,000 in high school.
The $4.9 million will cover the first phase of the project. It adds new academic buildings and tweaks the location of sports fields to increase parking and put in an access road to the south side of the campus.
For the expansion to work, WCS will need to increase the sewer capacity, which necessitates buying land to create treatment centers. Money for this is not included in current requests.
Long-term Task Force
A resolution creating a task force to figure out how to plan, fund and build the estimated 21 schools needed in the next decade was deferred to next month. Options at present include increasing property taxes, a wheel tax or sales tax. The recently-enacted Education Impact Fee is an option, also, for the construction of new schools but has yet to create much appreciable revenue.
