State Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, is leading a legislative subcommittee that is looking at how to modernize Virginia’s aging school buildings. He’s often pointed out that there are outdated schools in every part of the state.
Today, let’s take a deeper look at just where those schools are.
Toward the end of his term in 2013, Gov. Bob McDonnell ordered an inventory of every school in state to see how old they were. That report is often used as the baseline for discussing the age of Virginia’s schools. However, the state conducted a lesser-known inventory in 2017, so let’s use that more updated report.
First, the basics. That report counted 2,068 schools. That number may have changed a bit since then, with a few closures in Southwest Virginia and new ones in the urban crescent, but the numbers won’t have changed that much.
People are also reading…
Of those 2,068 schools, more than half are 50 years or older: 1,077, or 52 percent. That means they were built in 1968 or earlier.
Some 614 — or 29.6 percent — are 60 or more years old. That takes us back to 1958 or earlier.
Some of these buildings are, quite literally, falling apart. In Richmond, ceiling tiles have fallen on students. In Lee County, walls at one school have separated from the foundation. Even if other schools are still in good physical condition, though, they weren’t built for the technology demands of a 21st century education. In Lee County, schools now teach cybersecurity, but school staff struggles to keep the circuits from blowing out.
To get a better sense of the problem, let’s go back even further than 50 or even 60 years. Let’s go back 69 years, to 1949. We pick that year for a reason. That year saw a legendary political campaign — the first serious challenge to the Byrd Machine that controlled state politics. In those years, Democrats were a conservative party, and Republicans hardly counted. The Democratic nomination was tantamount to election in what amounted to a one-party state. That year, John Battle was U.S. Sen. Harry Byrd’s preferred candidate for governor. Battle, though, faced an unexpectedly strong primary challenge from his left in the form of retired Army colonel named Francis Pickens Miller.
Miller’s big campaign issue: Virginia’s schools were in bad shape. The state had a budget surplus. Miller wanted to use that to pay for new schools. He came close to pulling off an upset, but had to settle for a moral victory instead. The state’s political establishment was so spooked by Miller’s unexpectedly strong showing that the next year it decided that, yes, it could embark on upgrading Virginia’s schools. Gov. John Battle got the formal credit for that plan, but it was really Miller who inspired it. Regardless of who should get the political credit, by the time Battle left office in early 1954, some 400 new schools had been constructed — and more were on the way. The 1950s saw a school building boom of unprecedented proportions — most of it paid for by the state. There hasn’t been anything like it since, and now some of those buildings constructed during that great era of school construction are the ones often cited as examples of what Gov. Ralph Northam called “crumbling schools” in his inaugural address.
But the state still has lots of schools in use that were built before that 1950s building boom. So let’s go back before the 1950s and use 1949 as our reference point. Virginia has 264 schools that were in operation during the Battle-Miller campaign of 1949. The oldest dates from 1837 — New London Academy Elementary in Bedford County. It’s been remodeled many times, so it doesn’t look like a 19th century building, yet it is. The second oldest is Appomattox Middle School, built in 1908. In all, 13 percent of the state’s schools are so old that the great-grandparents or even great-great-grandparents of today’s students could have attended them.
Where are these 264 schools that, with the one exception we cited, were built between 1908 and 1949? They are all over. They are in 87 of the state’s 133 localities, which means 65 percent of the state’s counties and cities have at least one school that pre-dates the Battle School Plan. If you’re looking to put together a political coalition to make the case that upgrading old schools is a statewide issue, that’s a pretty good number to cite.
Let’s look even further. Who has the most old schools? Richmond, with an astounding 16 schools that pre-date 1950. No wonder the issue of school modernization has roiled the city’s politics. In fact, seven of those schools pre-date America’s involvement in World War I. Who has the second most number of pre-1950 schools? Probably not who you think. Fairfax County, with 13.
This really is an issue that touches all parts of Virginia. Still, it’s one that hits rural areas the most, because they have the least ability to pay for upgrading school buildings. Metro areas may have the most number of old schools, but many rural localities have a disproportionately higher share of old schools. For instance:
- In Patrick County, five of the county’s seven schools pre-date the 1950s. Those five were all built in the 1930s; the two others were built in 1952 and 1970.
- In Page County, five of the county’s nine schools pre-date the 1950s. The oldest of those was built in 1928.
- In Floyd County, three of the county’s five schools pre-date the 1950s. Somehow in 1939, the county managed to build three schools all at once. The other two were built in 1952, and 1962, which means that every school in the county is more than a half-century old.
Small cities share the same characteristics. In Martinsville, three of the city’s five schools pre-date 1950. The oldest was built in 1921. In Bristol, the figure is three of six, with the oldest dating from 1914.
That school — Virginia Middle School — is one of 19 in the state that are a century or more old. Of those 19, seven are in Richmond, two are in Bedford County, and one apiece in Appomattox County, Bristol, Chesapeake, Hampton, Harrisonburg, Hopewell, Loudoun County, Norfolk, Prince William County and Russell County. In other words, in every part of the state.
Stanley wants a statewide referendum on whether to issue several billion dollars’ worth of bonds to fix up old schools. Every bond referendum on the Virginia ballot since World War II has passed overwhelmingly, and with a “yes” vote in virtually every locality. Given the geography of Virginia’s oldest schools, history suggests a referendum for school bonds would have the same broad support.