Smithfield -- County Commissioners on Monday agreed to help school leaders with the spiraling cost of building two new high schools.

Dr. Anthony Parker, superintendent of schools, and Kay Carroll, chairman of the Board of Education, brought the request to commissioners Monday. The high schools in the Corinth-Holder and Cleveland communities were expected to cost $30 million apiece in a 2007 bond vote. But increases in the prices of steel, oil and copper have now put the price tag at $42.5 million each.

On Monday morning, school leaders asked commissioners to transfer $15 million from the Cleveland project to the Corinth-Holder project, bringing money available for that school to $45 million.

The move left only $15 million in the budget for the Cleveland high school, some $4.4 million of which will go toward grading the campus in preparation for building. The rest of the Cleveland construction contracts will have to be signed when money becomes available.

Toward that end, county leaders later called for a public hearing in August regarding a plan to borrow the remaining funds needed to complete the Cleveland school. John Massey, the county’s finance director, said the county would solicit bids from banks to loan the county up to $30 million in hopes of opening both schools by 2010.

Massey said the county was using a financing option akin to certificates of participation, which allow for borrowing without voter approval. But he said the installment contracts the county was seeking for the Cleveland high school project were different because, unlike with certificates of participation, the county would not sell bonds to the public.

“We went to the [Local Government Commission] and talked to them, and it seemed like this would be the best option for the county and for the schools and everyone else involved,” Massey said.

In the meantime, grading at the Cleveland school will go forward. “We’d like to move ahead with the site work contract for the Cleveland area high school while we have some good weather available,” Carroll, the school board chairman, told County Commissioners. “At some point, we will be able to work out the funding of the Cleveland area high school. The site work will be well under way so the contractor can go ahead and work on that school.”

Commissioner Wade Stewart supported the request but wondered whether $4.4 million was enough for the site-preparation work at Cleveland. “It is hard to cover every base, but you have to be extremely conscientious of that,” he said. “That is one of my fears. You get out there and someone says, ‘The soil is not as good as we thought it was, and it will cost another half million dollars [to replace it].’”

Carroll said he felt confident the new construction estimates for the schools were accurate. “I think we are as informed as you can be,” he said.