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Mobile classrooms at
Lake Norman High
The Iredell-Statesville Board of
Education recently voted to lease mobile classrooms to house an overflow
of students at Lake Norman High School.
The board rejected the option of
staggering class schedules to increase capacity. Knowledgeable sources
informed us that some or all of the overcrowding could have been
remedied by adjusting attendance lines.
The county commissioners have
already promised to give the schools $35 million for capital
improvements this year. It would require only a small fraction of that
amount to build a permanent classroom addition. One wonders why the
school board chose instead to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to
lease mobile classrooms.
All but the most naïve suspect it
may have something to do with the upcoming school bond campaign.
School spending
The Record & Landmark’s
“Out of our Past” column for May 9-15, 1980, reported that the Iredell
County Board of Education had adopted a local current expense budget of
$219.49 per pupil. The 25-year-old amount, adjusted for inflation,
computes to $520.19 per pupil in current, 2005 dollars. This year’s
current expense appropriation is $1,193 per pupil. Thus per-pupil local
school operating money, in constant dollars, has more than doubled over
the past 25 years.
Aramark to get food service
contract?
Word is the Iredell-Statesville
Schools plan to hire the Philadelphia-based Aramark company to operate
the system’s cafeterias.
Last year the Wilkes County school
system signed a one-year contract with Aramark. This year they decided
not to renew the contract. “They probably lost a substantial amount of
money this first year” said Superintendent Stephen Laws.
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