When Isle of Wight County supervisors budgeted $9.5 million for one-time school-related capital projects, it didn’t cover everything Isle of Wight County Schools had requested for the 2024-25 school year.

IWCS Superintendent Theo Cramer is hoping to fund the remainder in 2025-26. He and his staff presented county supervisors and the School Board with a list of eight one-time expense priorities, at a combined cost of $3.5 million to $10.4 million, during an Oct. 8 joint meeting of the two governing bodies.

School Board Chairman Jason Maresh said the board will likely meet to prioritize Cramer’s 2025-26 requests before officially presenting its 2025-26 budget requests to the supervisors for local funding. 

Cramer’s requests include:

 

Bus garage

At the top of Cramer’s list is improvements to the division’s circa-1955 bus garage, ranging in price from $775,000 to $7.5 million. The county’s adopted 2024-34 capital improvements plan allocates $735,000 this fiscal year toward the project.

The $775,000 option would add an additional vehicle bay to the existing garage to accommodate the division’s newest 77-passenger buses. A mid-level $4.2 million option would build a new bus garage with roughly the same size as the current 8,400-square-foot building. The third and costliest option, at $7.5 million, calls for a new facility with four bays and updated safety measures.

 

School buses

Cramer had initially requested 20 new buses last year, citing that roughly a third of the division’s buses in service during the 2023-24 school year were at or nearing the 15-year lifespan or 300,000-mile threshold when it’s customary to begin looking at replacements. The division’s 2024-25 budget includes funding for five buses, which Deputy Superintendent Christopher Coleman said likely won’t arrive until the 2025-26 school year due to the typical 12- to 18-month turnaround from the date of purchase to when a new school bus arrives.

Cramer is hoping to purchase an additional five to six buses at the start of the 2025-26 school year, at an estimated cost of $750,000 to $900,000, with those buses going into service during the 2026-27 school year.

According to Cramer’s list of budget requests, a yearly rotation cycle that calls for replacing five to six buses per year has been developed but not implemented. IWCS has added 11 new buses since 2019. Buses manufactured in 2010 or prior still account for 44% of the division’s fleet.

 

Weapon detection systems

The 2024-25 budget included funding to purchase eight portable weapon detection systems for the entrances to Smithfield and Windsor high schools. Cramer’s budget priorities for 2025-26 call for $180,098 to purchase additional screening devices for the division’s two middle schools and five elementary schools.

 

Compensation study

A $40,000 compensation study was among the cuts the School Board made to its 2024-25 budget in June. Cramer has included the request in his funding priorities for 2025-26, stating it’s been seven years since the division last studied its pay scales in comparison to neighboring divisions.

 

New bleachers

While repairs to the tracks surrounding the Smithfield and Windsor high school football fields were included in the 2024-25 budget, the School Board had cut a planned replacement of the SHS field’s bleachers and handicap-accessible seating. Cramer has resubmitted the request for 2025-26 to budget $210,000 for new bleachers and $125,000 for handicap-accessible seating.

According to Coleman, bids for the replacement tracks came in at $800,000 to $900,000 per school, roughly double what had been budgeted. It’s one of the reasons the work on the tracks hasn’t been completed. The other reason, he said, is that adding the final layer of coating to a track requires seven days without rain and temperatures above 60 degrees.

 

SHS band room

IWCS has, since at least 2020, planned to expand space at Smithfield High for the school’s growing band. As of 2022, the division’s five-year plan called for funding a renovation during the 2026-27 school year.

Cramer is proposing to move that up a year and has requested $1.4 million to begin the work in 2025-26. 

According to Coleman, the latest plan calls for removing an unneeded boiler and renovating the room housing it into a new band room, rather than renovating the existing band room. This will save the division the annual cost of having the boiler inspected, Coleman said.

 

SHS tennis court

Windsor High School received a grant this year to resurface its tennis courts. Cramer has proposed $115,000 to correct a drainage issue and resurface the courts at Smithfield High School.