Theo Cramer, superintendent of Isle of Wight County Schools in Virginia, worked for his family’s drywall company before going into education. Now, Cramer is again putting his drywall skills to the test as he helps with the renovation of the school district’s new office.

The school district is creating its new office from two wings of Hardy Elementary School, which was created around 1961.

Cramer has already gotten to work, as a video from the school district shows him taping drywall seams in a former classroom, which will be converted into offices, as reported in a story by Stephen Faleski of The Smithfield Times.

“It’s important for people to see that you can do both; you can have a trade and you can go to college,” Cramer said.

Lynn Briggs, the school district’s spokesperson, said that the goal is to have everybody moved into the new office by Jan. 13. Cramer has already relocated, along with deputy superintendent Christopher Coleman and the administrative assistants. Coleman said that moving to a new building will not change division administrators’ phone numbers.

When plans for the new building were being discussed, the school’s gymnasium was going to be saved, but Cramer suggested turning it into a climate-controlled warehouse instead, saving the school district over $800,000 on its construction.

Around the same time, the new building’s plans called for removing a classroom wing, but Cramer recommended using the wing, which is perpendicular, as a separate building for the school district’s administration, special education and technology departments. These three departments are not currently in the same building, as the technology department is at the school district’s high school while the administration and special education are in the elementary school.

“The primary purpose for the school administration office in the beginning was the warehouse – a 2,000-square-foot warehouse, climate-controlled and secured; something that this division has never had,” Coleman said.

The renovation is being funded with the remainder of a $2.3 million state school-construction grant the school district received in 2022, as well as an additional $2.4 million state grant that it received in 2024. At the school board’s meeting on Dec. 12, Coleman estimated that the work would cost $1.4 million at the most.

“It’s costing this county – taxpayers – zero dollars out of local taxpayer dollars,” Cramer said.

Coleman said that the division is still working through details of the final payments. Once that happens, an exact total cost will be provided to the school board.

The renovation will also allow the county’s capital improvement plan to cut $2 million, as the plan has called for building a new office for many years.

Coleman estimated that if the division had tried to build a 20,000-square-foot office from the ground up, it would have cost $500 per square foot, or approximately $11 million, even without the warehouse.