Pocahontas School’s CEFP -Why it is Important to the Schools’ Future
In Part 1 of Pocahontas County School Superintendent’s May report to our listeners, Terrence Beam explained just what is the school system’s 10-year Comprehensive Educational Facilities Plan, also called the CEFP, and he emphasized that developing it will be a community effort through a CEFP Committee that will be community driven. In this second part of his report, Beam talks about what the CEFP means for the future of the Pocahontas County Schools and about this year’s Major Improvement Project funds they have applied for to the School Building authority.
“Now the purpose for doing a CEFP is also for funding” said Beam. “The SBA -the School Building Authority- is the one who really initiated this whole process of a CEFP, because they wanted each county to determine what their needs were for their school system. So, when you go to the SBA and you ask for funds, they want to know if this is a priority of the community? Is this something that’s just spur of the moment, or is this something that you have thought about and you need to do for your school system? And if those are the things that you go to the SBA for, then it gives you a better opportunity to seek funding. Part of this process is also coming up with a plain on how the local community provides some financial support for this plan, because we cannot expect, and it will not happen, where the SBA will just write a check for everything that we want. We have to have ‘some skin in the game’ for a lack of a better term as to some local share funds. And the (CEFP) committee will have to decide how we are going to provide those local funds. That is part of this process, so we sought out community members who we knew would be very interested in it. I took a lot of phone calls. We did not turn down anybody who wanted to be on this committee. So, we did not pick and choose this committee, they kind of picked and chose us. I’ll give you an update on their first night at the high school in July. We probably will not be meeting through the summer because it is really hard in the summer to get everybody together. But we want to kick this thing off now while we have the opportunity.”
Just a very quick little reminder, on June 17th, which is a Monday, two weeks from this coming Monday, the SBA will announce their MIP awards. These are Major Improvement Projects. The last two summers we received money from the SBA. Two years ago we got money for the high school to replace the septic system, which has been completed, and the water tank, which is being done as we speak. And last year we received money for Green Bank Elementary-Middle School for several projects that needed worked on there. Part of that was a roof, part of it was a fire alarm system, a sprinkler system -those kinds of things. We are actually going back this year to seek additional funding for Green Bank because we only received half of what we asked for last year. So we are going back to ask for the other half so we can get the rest of the roof replaced at Green Bank. We’ll know about that immediately -we’ll know on June 17th whether we are getting funding or not, so, at our first Board meeting in July we will be able to make that announcement.”
As soon as the Schools forward us a copy of the names and committee assignments of the members of the CEFP Committee, we will post it at the end of this story on our web site, www.alleghenymountainradio.org.
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