March 13, 2020
By: Dwayne Page
After being denied funding by the county commission for a multi Pre-K to 8th grade school construction project, the Board of Education is reverting to its original plan of building a new Pre-K to 2nd grade school.
During Thursday night’s regular monthly meeting, the board voted to rescind action from its December meeting to seek more than $48 million in funding for its Pre-K to 8th grade school plan and to ask that the County Commission fund construction of a Pre-K to 2nd grade school. But this time, the Board is not asking for any specific amount of funding.
The action by the Board came after Director Patrick Cripps received official notification by letter from the County Mayor that the previous request for $48 million had been rejected by the County Commission as too costly.
“I’ll make a motion to present to the County Commission a proposal for one Pre-K through 2 school,” said 7th district school board member Shaun Tubbs after the motion had passed to rescind the previous request for the Pre-K to 8 funding.
After a second was offered to Tubb’s motion, Board Chairman Danny Parkerson asked “Do we need to attach a dollar amount with the request”.
“Last time we had a proposal for $30 million (for a Pre-K to 2nd grade school). Should we attach that to this request so they (County Commission) will have a dollar figure of $30 million or less (needed for the project),” asked Parkerson.
“I want to leave my motion as is to just ask for a Pre-K through 2 school (without any dollar amount attached),” answered Tubbs.
The motion was adopted.
More than two years ago Upland Design Group, the Board of Education’s architect, estimated construction costs for a Pre-K to 2 school at over $17 million. Updated numbers in November, 2019 put the figure at over $30 million but by that time the project accounted for more students than the original plan.
Prior to the regular meeting Thursday night, Director Cripps said during a work session with the board that the project could be downsized to cut costs.
“I know a lot of people were concerned about the size of the school with a capacity of 900 students and we did increase it to 900 (from the original plan) thinking that Pre-K might someday be mandated by the state. But if we need to pare it down we can do that. I wouldn’t suggest paring it down to 600 students but maybe by 100 to leave it at a capacity of 800 students at least,” said Director Cripps.
After the board vote on seeking construction for a Pre-K to 2nd grade school, Chairman Parkerson appointed a committee consisting of Director Cripps and fellow board members W.J. (Dub) Evins III and Doug Stephens to formalize a proposal for the school including a recommendation on where to purchase approximately 25 acres of additional property (possibly adjacent to Northside Elementary School) to be funded (land purchase) by the school system.