Board authorizes negotiations on land for high school

The Craven County Board of Education authorized its agent on Tuesday to begin negotiations to buy land in the U.S. 70 East corridor for a new high school.

Board Chairman Carr Ipock said the board does not expect to hear back until December on the effort.

The exact location of the tract and the owner were not disclosed.

The board has been looking since it bought land for Creekside Elementary School to get a tract big enough for a high school and middle school between New Bern and Havelock. It had an option on a Weyerhaeuser tract for which the county approved funding, but that tract proved to have too much wetland.

It would take a minimum of four years to get the land and plan and build the high school even if the money were in hand, said Larry Moser, the schools superintendent.

But the project is urgent, Moser said, because of the need to divide the student population of 1,800 at New Bern High School and to accommodate projected county growth including growth from a buildup of Marine Corps personnel.

Moser said that "1,800 are too many students for one location." Havelock High School has about 1,200 students and West Craven High School has about 1,100. A small, alternative county high school is operated at Craven Community College.

Moser and Ipock said a new school would probably cost between $40 million and $60 million.

Rick Hemphill, Craven County finance administrator, said that "based on the current way we have funded schools, it would be somewhere around 2015 before there would be sufficient funds to handle building a high school."

The county uses dedicated sales tax, state average daily membership money, and lottery money to go into a fund used to pay the debt service on school construction, which is currently $6.4 million, Hemphill said.

Ipock and Moser suggested the county might consider some innovative methods to speed up a new high school.

They include using a 1/4-cent sales tax, which the legislature allows counties to adopt through a referendum, or even a lease-purchase plan that one school builder has proposed.

Hemphill said a 1/4-cent sales tax could generate as much as $2.5 million a year. Funding a $40 million school for 20 years with 4 percent interest would cost almost $3 million a year.