Prince William School Board Approves Bid for Devlin Road School

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The Prince William County School Board unanimously approved the $20.286 million construction bid from Dustin Construction to build the Devlin Road Elementary School* in Bristow at their Dec. 18 meeting.

School Board members were satisfied with the cost of the school. Chairman Milt Johns even called the price for the 107,273 square foot school, "almost amazing."

The Devlin Road elementary school to be built along Devlin Road in north Bristow will help to ease the overpopulation at other nearby schools on the western end of the county when it opens in the fall of 2015.

Although Brentsville District School Board member Gil Trenum proposed tabling the vote to approve the 12th high school in the Coles District, Coles School Board member Dr. Michael Otaigbe said, “I’m not going to play games and say, ‘Let’s table this.’”

Recognizing, perhaps, that the school was not controversial, Otaigbe said, “I will not try to play politics with this. When I look at this motion, I see children.”

Trenum responded that to be fair to his fellow board members, he asked the administration if the vote on the elementary school in his district could also be tabled. However, he was told that would affect the progress of the Independent Hill School as well.

Chairman Milt Johns agreed the school was needed, saying, “We are busting at the seams all over the county."

After Neabsco District School Board member Lisa Bell asked if it would be a LEED [Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design] certified school, Johns said, “I thought it was a very good price. The fact that we have LEED certification involves makes it almost amazing.”

Johns also said that whether a school is a LEED certified school, or not, is another detail, Johns said he would like the School Board to decide upon, and he plans to add it to Policy 810, which outlines the process for how the School Board must approve schools proposed by the school administration.

This recommendation followed the concern by some School Board members, including Trenum, that there had not been enough transparency in the process of approving the 12th high school; School Board members found out about expensive design items, like a $300-400,000 orchestra lift and turf fields, much later than they would have liked.

The Devlin Road School has not been controversial in recent years. However, when the proposal for the Nokesville K-8 School was presented for bid approval, one of the arguments against it was that elementary schools in Bristow were more overcrowded than Nokesville Elementary School. However, Trenum had argued, along with the Nokesville community, that Nokesville Elementary School was extremely outdated, so they were not just relieving overcrowding, but building a replacement school as well.

At the public boundary meetings for the Nokesville K-8 School, Associate Superintendent from the Planning Office Dave Beavers and Director Matt Cartilidge explained that with the Devlin Road School and the Vint Hill School listed on their capital improvement plan, population should not be moved within the Nokesville K-8 attendance boundaries.

 *The name for the school has not been finalized and until then, it is simply being called the Devlin Road School, which describes its location along Devlin Road in Bristow. 

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