The Alexander County Board of Education discussed a five-year facility improvement plan at a district work session Monday evening. The discussion centered on upgrades at Sugar Loaf Elementary School. The school opened in 1958 and was most recently updated in 2002 with six new classrooms.
Pinnacle Architecture of Matthews discussed a plan to build a new gymnasium, create new offices, change the old gym into a media center, and demolish the old gym at a price tag of 5.5 million dollars at Sugar Loaf. The architects say they would be ready to go to the bidding process from the drawings by February.
The board did not take any action because the meeting was a work session but discussed how to move forward with Sugar Loaf and other projects. Member Scott Bowman, who heads up the facilities committee of the board, wondered how to pay for the work that needs to be done. He said the board should decide if members are on the same page and whether they should ask Alexander County leaders for a loan. Currently, the school system does not have any debt.
The county school system does have 4.6 million dollars in lottery money to spend; however, only gets $300,000 in lottery funds a year. Lottery money for capital projects must be spent on students’ needs and cannot be spent on athletic projects or office space. The school system just learned days ago that it did not receive an award from the state for the Sugar Loaf project.
Maintenance Director Chris Campbell presented some of the biggest expenses the district needs to undertake in the next year. The heating and air conditioning and ventilation system (HVAC) at West Alexander Middle School is operating with a system that is too old to have parts replaced. The ticket price on fixing the HVAC at WAMS is more than 1.3 million dollars. Campbell says this is a fix that is “almost a must.” He says maintenance staff are using parts from four circuits of the HVAC system to keep the other circuits going at West.
Board members Scott Bowman and Matt Cooksey asked for clarification with Campbell who said the HVAC is the “number one priority”. Campbell says he would need direction from the board to be able to move forward with the project for West Alexander. Ideally the school system can get bids back in 2-3 weeks for the project but getting contractors during a labor shortage is the difficult part. Campbell would like to do the West project over the upcoming summer.
Finance officer Sharon Mehaffey says that the school system requires about a million dollars to cover normal maintenance and facility needs district-wide. In addition, the lease for chromebooks and ipads for students along with technology for teachers is near one-million dollars a year.
Superintendent Dr. Jennifer Hefner says she would like to get to the point where maintenance workers are “not playing catch-up.” She says she would like the staff to be able to work more hours pro-actively. That might mean money in places for upgrades versus routine maintenance. Campbell also discussed the painting, carpet removal, window replacements, lighting, parking lot paving, and main office tiling schedule, which includes all schools.
Also on the list of upgrades is the ability to make West Alexander Middle and East Alexander Middle Schools athletic fields handicap accessible and create concession stands. Campbell explained that grant money can not be used on athletic facilities, maintenance offices, or central office upgrades. The facilities report is routine work for the board but the Sugar Loaf project was questioned at the
September school board meeting. Board member Matt Cooksey asked to learn more about the proposed gym project since Sugar Loaf elementary is operating below capacity. A Department of Public Instruction review in 2017 put Sugar Loaf Elementary’s capacity at 328.