By Dan Adkins

For nearly three months, Patricia Putty has wondered when the world turned upside down.

“When that came out, you could have knocked me over with a feather,” the Scott County Schools superintendent said in a recent interview.

She was referring to what she described as “misconceptions,” inaccurate information that prompted the Scott County Board of Education last month to delay construction of a second high school, pushing the opening date of its $23 million first phase back from August 2017 to at least the following August.

The entire project, which would accommodate 1,500 students, will likely not be complete until 2025, Putty recently said.

The school would ease existing overcrowding at Scott County High School, as well as help absorb the projected increase in the county’s high-school population from its current level of nearly 1,800 to about 3,000 in 10 years. SCHS’s rated capacity is 1,095 students.

The board started on its path to stalling the project in mid-September, when board member Kevin Kidwell raised questions about additions to the new Great Crossing High School’s site-preparation drawings, things like a retaining wall that had not been included in the plans the board approved two months before.

At that point, the project was still on track to begin first-phase site prep around Nov. 1.

But then Kidwell and board member Stephanie Watson Powers — both of whom are in their first year on the panel — raised questions about the planned location of the school’s foundation, despite the fact the board had voted 4-0-1 (Powers abstained) to approve the site adjacent to Elkhorn Creek School.

Powers and Kidwell also argue they feel they have not had access to all the information about the GCHS project.

That claim has prompted irate responses from board members Jennifer Holbert and Jo Anna Fryman, both of whom point out Powers and Kidwell were present last December and all of this year when architects presented a variety of designs.

Meanwhile, board Chair Haley Conway, who had been a longtime advocate of building a new high school, began urging the board to delay the project until a new superintendent takes office in July 2016.

There was all that, along with the “misconceptions” Putty cited:

“The plan was always to have athletics at both (Scott County and Great Crossing high) schools,” Putty said.

“We knew in the first phase” — which would open to 700 students — “there would be two practice fields,” she said.

The new school would not initially have its own gymnasium, she admitted.

Conway has repeatedly cited a gymnasium as “the heart of a school,” essential to creating school spirit and, therefore, an essential component when the building opens.

But Sherman Carter Barnhart architect Mike Smith has said the cost of a gymnasium alone would cost $8 million to $12 million — depending on the number of entrances and concession areas.

That would push the cost of the first phase above $31 million — an amount that exceeds the school district’s bonding potential.

Putty said the school eventually will have its own gym — just not in its first phase.

(The school’s initial physical education classes will be held in its cafeteria, which will be built in the first phase with a size to accommodate GCHS’s eventual capacity for 1,500 students.)

Where things would get dicey, she said, was how and where the teams would play their games.

Currently, SCHS plays football games at Georgetown College’s Toyota Stadiums, its basketball games in its gym and baseball and softball games on fields at neighboring Brooking Park.

But that issue would be more a matter of scheduling, she said: When SCHS plays “away” games, GCHS could use the SCHS gym (until the GCHS gym is built) or Toyota Stadium. Meanwhile, GCHS could play baseball and softball games at the regulation fields built at Lemons Mill Elementary School.

For his part, Conway has advocated building an athletic complex that would serve both high schools’ needs and would eliminate the use of Toyota Stadium.

He cites the model of McCracken County Schools in Paducah, which obtained corporate donations to pay for its complex, with facilities named for the contributing companies.

No local companies appear to have expressed interest in a similar plan here.

“When you open a new school, the staff follow the kids,” school district Finance Director Randy Cutright said.

“At the high school level, the allocation formula calls for a 25-to-1 staffing ratio. If the district constructs a 700-student school... you’re looking at about 28 (teaching) staff,” Cutright said.

“Even (a proportionate number of) the cafeteria staff will follow the students” to GCHS, said Putty.

“No student, regardless of which school they attend, should be denied the same curriculum offerings. So (there will be) equal access to the curriculum,” Putty said.

The year prior to GCHS’s opening, Putty said, students that likely will attend that school will be surveyed to determine their desired course offerings.

“The thing about high school is that the number of courses you offer and the courses you offer can vary from year to year, depending on student requests,” Putty said.

“We then look at those student requests to determine which classes we need to offer,” she said.

After GCHS’s first year of operation, she said, the school’s site-based decision-making council will decide the number of courses and the school’s curriculum.

“But we have always said every student in Scott County should have equal access to the curriculum,” she said.

The new school will also include classrooms for band and chorus, she said.

At the November regular meeting, Powers questioned the final amount of the price tag on Lemons Mill Elementary School’s landscaping.

“So we spent $82,000 for sod and bushes? No wonder we’re in financial trouble,” Powers said.

Powers also has urged the relocation of GCHS’s foundation to a different site but still adjacent to ECS.

The current site, she notes, is where “unengineered” fill dirt, trucked in when U.S. 460 was widened below Great Crossing, was dumped.

She has expressed concern about karst layers beneath the chosen site, as well as possible instability of the foundation.

“We will save money by moving the site,” Powers said last week.

But construction manager Tim Geegan has repeatedly assured the board that core drillings at the current site show it will support GCHS.

He’s also said the fill dirt, which would be moved away from the foundation’s location, will reduce costs by not requiring builders to buy dirt from other sources for fill as construction wraps up.

Board member Fryman noted the district already has paid out $1.2 million for architects, engineers and other fees on the current designs.

Asking Smith and Geegan to look at the other site will add to the cost of the project, Fryman said.

“I fully intend to keep track of every cent” of additional costs, Fryman said.

The additional fees, along with interest-rate increases likely to come soon, likely will increase the new high school’s price tag, Fryman said.

In any event, the school district would not pay the full $23 million for the school’s first phase out of its regular budget.

That money would come from bonds the school district would sell, then pay back over 20 years. A phased-in school would require at least two bond issues as its size increased.

Meanwhile, Cutright disputed Powers’ contention that the school district “is in financial trouble.”

Scott County’s contingency fund stands at 6.478 percent of its $54 million 2015-16 general-fund budget, Cutright said.

That’s more than three times the 2 percent the state requires districts to maintain in contingency funds, he notes.

“We’re not broke,” Putty added.