What to do about Waynesboro High School: Viewpoints dives in

Waynesboro Vice Mayor Terry Short serves on a joint committee of four members from Waynesboro City Council and the Waynesboro School Board charged with building relations between the two bodies.

The effort is “working to create an important trust element between both bodies” on education issues in the city, Short said in an interview on Viewpoints, a new public-affairs TV series that debuted Wednesday night.

Go to WVPT.net for more details on how to view the program on demand.

A key issue on the table for the committee is the future of Waynesboro High School. The School Board is advocating for the construction of a new high school at a cost of $75 million.

Coming to a resolution on the high school will not be easy.

“Things cost money. You can’t say you need to improve the high school and not have an expectation that the money has to come from someplace. You can’t address compensation on payroll for staff and not have the expectation that the revenue has to come from someplace. There are lots of choices to make in our community, and one of the things we’re going to look at is finding a solution that has a number of advantages to it beyond just replacing a building, renovating a building, making improvements in that regard,” Short said.

“I think that we have to look holistically at the investment and how that singular investment can yield multiple returns for our community in the sense of supporting our labor market pool, attracting new businesses, creating neighborhood stabilization and also making a world-class facility right here in Waynesboro that people are going to clamor to because it’s so amazing. That’s certainly a goal,” Short said. “At the same time, being fiscally responsible. It’s a fragile community, as I said many times during the campaign, and in that regard, we have to make choices, and there are lots of choices to make, lots of things we could do in the city, but it has to be done pragmatically. So that’s one of the things we’ll be working very hard on for the next several months.”

Short was joined on Viewpoints by Elzena Anderson, who was elected in May to represent Ward A on Waynesboro City Council.

Anderson hopes the joint committee can “open up conversation a little bit more between the residents and School Board and City Council.”

“Hopefully, that will get improve and get more buy-in from the community, for them to see that there are issues that we need to take care of with our schools, not only the high school, but also Wenonah Elementary. So hopefully with this new committee we can see some change,” Anderson said.