The Chicora "Graded" School building deteriorated for years while owned by the Charleston County School District. That was then. The present CCSD administration actually pays to maintain unused buildings, or at least, it gives that impression to taxpayers. A case in point is the Archer campus downtown, claimed to cost $18,000 per year to maintain.
Have you ever driven past that building? Built in 1936 for black elementary students, it has undergone renovations for use as "swing space" as the district spent its way into multiple new buildings unhampered by lack of capital funds. Now CCSD hopes to sell it and the city block it occupies. The sale of the Laing School property in Mt. Pleasant for $12 million has the administration salivating for more.
Just a simple query before the district starts devouring itself: into which budget did the $12 million go? In the past, such windfalls (if you can call them that) ended up in the operations budget. How about this one? In other words, is the desire to sell off surplus buildings seen as a money-saving gesture or as a way to build up the operations budget?
As any savvy investor knows, living off capital leads to disaster in the long run.
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