Sullivan facilities plan may include technical education high school

BLOUNTVILLE — Sullivan County's still-evolving school facilities study likely will include a centralized or maybe even regionalized career technical education high school, Director of Schools Jubal Yennie predicted Thursday.And school board member Todd Broughton, who has been at odds with the consultant for the facilities study, said he wishes to meet with the consultant when he is in town the week of April 12 as the five other active board members already have. Yennie, speaking to the Board of Education during a work session, said the facilities study being led by consultant Tracy Richter is still morphing."We need to go out and look at some models," Yennie said of Wise County, Va., northern Georgia, Springfield, Mass., Overland Park, Kan., and Delaware."I'm having architects call me all the time," Yennie said. Board Vice Chairman Jack Bales mentioned Delaware, Wise County native and board member Jerry Greene mentioned Wise County, and Yennie said that Springfield was the destination of an Eastman Chemical Company-led trip of educators last year.Richter, of Ohio-based DeJong-Richter, is to present the final facilities study results to the county school board on May 4 for its consideration. Then, Yennie said, the work on how to implement it and fund it in stages will begin, transforming the facilities plan to a capital plan.Past drafts of the county plans would cost from about $135 million to more than $200 million but save money over time by more efficient energy operations and fewer employees, through attrition, as schools become what Richter said is "right sized." The Kingsport draft plans would cost about $100 million.The most recent public county draft plans would either build two new county high schools, two new high schools and reuse Sullivan South, or close North as a high school and keep South, Central and East.Broughton of Bloomingdale has been an avid supporter of keeping North as a high school, although the Kingsport draft facilities plan calls for the city assuming North as a city middle school, joining a new middle school in the MeadowView area with Sevier and Robinson middle schools to become elementary schools. Richter is to scheduled to meet with the county school board at 6 p.m., April 13, to go over the facilities study redrafts.Broughton — called on the carpet last year for a text to Richter questioning facilities capacity numbers using colorful language — said he requested a meeting with Richter months ago via email but never got a response from Yennie, who called the whole situation a miscommunication. The other five active school board members have already met with Richter."I understand. It's OK," Yennie said, asking Broughton a second time if he wanted to meet with Richter. "There's a lot of questions I have that I don't have answers to, so yes," Broughton said.One, he said, is how the North building had slightly more than the 1,400 capacity listed for South when both were built at the same time and the same size. North has been converted to a school within a school housing North Middle. Board member Randall Jones said the middle school classes were more like 25 or more students each, compared to high school classes of 17 or less, especially for career and technical students.Yennie likened the separate but parallel city and county facilities studies facilitated by Richter and their collaborative and cooperative activities to Thursday's announcement that Wellmont Health System and Mountain States Health Alliance — two formerly fierce hospital and health care competitors — are merging.He handed out "Better Together" notepad pages given out during the afternoon health care announcement. Both studies have steered clear of consolidating the school systems, something city school leaders said up front would have to be off limits for them to participate in a study.Still, Yennie said the two studies in many ways fit together, and Richter has said they might set the stage for merged school systems down the road.