School Board OKs $180,000 to help pave McBride Road

The Van Buren Public Schools Board of Education unanimously agreed to chip in up to $180,000 towards the paving of McBride Road, the deteriorated roadway in front of McBride Middle School that has brought many complaints from parents.
The vote was taken at Monday’s work-study meeting that was transformed into a special meeting so action could be taken.
Director of Plant Operations James Williams said Van Buren Township approached the school district and asked if it was interested in participating in a grant to get McBride paved.
He said he asked the school attorney if Sinking Funds could be used for road paving and the attorney said it could. Williams said there are funds in the Sinking Fund account that could be used.
Ron Akers, director of planning and economic development for Van Buren Township, explained the proposal, with the help of VBT’s consulting engineer Dave Nummer from Wade Trim.
Akers said Wayne County has the Local Partnership for Local Roads, which VBT used in 2015 to pave Dewitt, Jeannette, and Venetian roads and roads in Walden Woods. This was on an 80%-20% deal, with the county paying 80% and property owners on the streets agreeing to a special assessment district to pay the 20%.
This local road grant money was put in place by former Wayne County Executive Bob Ficano.
Akers said the county has another $750,000 for a local road project. He said the paving of McBride between Quirk and Beck roads is expected to cost $882,890.13 and 20% of that is $176,500.
Board president Brent Mikulski asked if this could be done in the summer when school is not in session.
Engineer Nummer said the plan would be to start after school is out and be done before school starts again. He said they have to get started quickly with specifications and bids before a contractor is selected.
Akers said this time instead of having homeowners pay, they have asked the school.
“We received preliminary approval from the county,” Akers said. He said they would have a community meeting before starting construction so residents could have their questions answered.
Trustee Sherry Frazier asked if Williams was sure the school district could use Sinking Funds on the road since the district does not own the road.
Williams said he took it to the auditors and the auditors said it was allowable.
Trustee Frazier said that was critical since if the Sinking Funds were misspent, the district never would be allowed to have Sinking Funds again.
“Exactly,” said Interim Superintendent Shonta Langford Green, indicating that is why they checked carefully. She said the township can’t move forward without the school district.
“They need a stakeholder,” Green said.
“It will save us $180,000 in bus maintenance,” Frazier said, half jokingly.
Secretary Kevin English asked if they would be putting in sidewalks and Akers said the county intended the money for roads and the township has no money for sidewalk improvement.
Frazier suggested the township talk to the homeowners to see if they would pay for sidewalks.
At the end of the meeting when people were allowed to comment, Angela Mears said the paving of McBride would be fantastic, but without sidewalks it would be scary since students walk on the road to get to and from school and traffic would be going more rapidly.
“Consider spending money for sidewalks for the safety of our children,” Mears said.
Akers said they can’t do it with Wayne County funds, but the township will look into it.
Frazier restated: “Homeowners might be willing to do it.” She said as a realtor she knows having the road paved will increase the values of the homes along McBride.
In other business at Monday’s meeting, the board heard the second and third quarterly reports by Diane Kullis and Becky Ross on McBride’s status as a Focus School and how the district was working to get McBride Middle School out of that designation. The state requires these reports to be made to the board of education.
A Focus School has a large achievement gap between the top and bottom 30% of students. The bottom 30% are now called Spotlight students, to take away the stigma of the previous designation. McBride was named a Focus School in 2014.
Since the reports totaled 26 pages of information, Trustee Frazier complained that the presenters should have used a PowerPoint to project the information on the screen so members of the audience could understand what was being reported.
“I take complete responsibility,” said Interim Superintendent Green. “This was a work study and usually we don’t have presentations at work study.”
Kullis is the district’s Coordinator of State and Federal Grants and Ross is District Instructional Coach. Kullis had served as the district’s Curriculum Director and stayed on another year after her scheduled retirement last year at the request of the former superintendent to train new Curriculum Director Jeff Moore. Kullis will be retiring at the end of June.