The Kanawha County Board of Education put out for public comment Monday a policy revision that would ban e-cigarettes, vaping and all substances containing nicotine at all times from property the county public school system owns, leases or operates, including athletic facilities and vehicles.
The board also voted to approve about $740,000 worth of "change orders," increasing the cost for providing portable classrooms for Herbert Hoover High students, whose school building was closed after being damaged in the June 2016 flood. Hoover students are set to occupy the portables until a new school is built.
Charles Wilson, the school system's executive director of facilities planning, said three-quarters of the cost for the extra work - most of which already has been completed - will be funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with the remaining quarter being funded by the state.
He said the portables should be ready for students to move into when school starts next week.
The board also approved transferring Edgewood Elementary Assistant Principal Dana Grogg to the Piedmont Elementary principal position, transferring McKinley Middle School science teacher Beth A. Horton to an assistant principal position at Riverside High and transferring Stonewall Jackson Middle math teacher Abby J. Stevens to a curriculum assistant principal position at Cedar Grove Middle.
All those transfers are effective as of Tuesday. Piedmont, which is on a year-round school calendar, is the only one of those schools to have already started classes; former Piedmont principal Susan Young resigned July 14, shortly after the start of that school's school year.
All votes Monday were 4-0, with Ryan White the only board member absent.
The school system currently has a policy, last revised in 1997, that bans tobacco.
"We've had some concerns raised recently with regard to some of these e-cigarettes or vapes that don't really contain a tobacco product but contain nicotine," said school system General Counsel Jim Withrow.
He said principals have expressed a few concerns regarding nicotine being used on school grounds.
The proposed policy changes put out for public comment would add to the tobacco prohibition policy, after the phrase "No person shall distribute or use any substance containing tobacco," the words "and/or nicotine, including, without limitation, e-cigarettes." Students also would be banned from possessing any substance containing nicotine.
The proposed changes would ban nicotine use at football games and other sporting events.
Beyond all property owned, leased or operated by the school system, the ban would also apply to "any private buildings, or other property ... used for school activities when students and staff are present."
As for the change orders, documents provided at Monday afternoon's meeting showed there were four approved totaling the $740,000, increasing to $9.9. million the total expected cost to set up the portables, rent them for four school years and eventually remove them. Before Monday, the project already had about $528,000 in previously authorized change orders increasing the cost.
The portables are being installed adjacent to Elkview Middle by Illinois-based company Innovative Modular Solutions. Wilson said he expects students will be in the new Hoover by the start of the 2021-22 school year.
"We've talked to FEMA about how to handle these extras - originally we were gonna have subsequent bids, but they felt that going this route with change orders would be the best way to go, so we're following their lead and the state's lead," Wilson said. "When we put these portable projects out to bid we were somewhat under the gun on time trying to get in there."
He said there "were still a lot of unknowns at the time and so some of these change orders are a result of that." The extra work includes, among other things, additional sidewalks, security fencing, technology infrastructure and a student common area.
It also includes wider piers for the portables to sit on - Wilson said the school system didn't yet have soil samples when it solicited bids for the project, so it didn't know that the soil didn't have the typical bearing capacity.
"We typically take a year to design a new school," Wilson said, "we took a little over a month to do this one, the portable school."
Reach Ryan Quinn at 304-348-1254, ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.