By Rabyn Ratliff
June 16, 2008 11:52 pm
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VALDOSTA — The Lowndes County Board of Education heard updates for architectural plans of the new Pine Grove Elementary School during its regular board meeting Monday.
As the system prepares for the development of a new three-school campus site to serve students in grades K-12, architects of the McCall & Associates Inc. Firm shared preliminary designs for the new Pine Grove Elementary, scheduled to open in fall 2010.
“The school is designed to serve an FTE count of 750, with a core (growth capacity) of 1,000,” said John McCall, AIA Associate.
In a more modern approach to the designs of yesterday, the school will also include several accommodations to better serve students and teachers while working to enhance the overall learning experience and safety aspect of the school.
“Each classroom is 850-900 square feet, and for every two classrooms, there will be bathrooms between, which adds a little more flexibility so that teachers don’t lose so much class time taking groups to the restroom throughout the day,” McCall said. “The larger module classrooms will also be built with small vestibule areas in between, which can be used by the teacher to break down groups within the classroom.”
Additionally, the front area of the school will be built to provide optimum safety, as “People coming in the front lobby will be segregated from the rest of the school,” said McCall.
The group looks to continue revising the plan before bringing it before the board later this year. Once approved, the project is expected to go out for bid in December with the start of construction anticipated in January 2009.
In related discussions, the board voted to approve a new well project for the Pine Grove Complex site, in efforts to begin an irrigation process immediately.
“The original plan for irrigation was to use the six-inch well already on the property at the far end, but no one has acknowledged putting the well there, and we don’t know much about it,” said Mike Powers, director of operations and facilities. “In our research, however, we found that it would cost $40,000 to install a 30-horsepower pump in order to irrigate the whole site.”
In comparing the cost of upgrade to installing a new well, Powers asked the board to consider the latter option.
“We could put in a new eight-inch well, and bring it closer to the school, with a 30 or 50-horsepower pump, at $30,250 for the 30-horse pump, or $36,900 for the 50-horsepower pump.”
Hoping to move ahead with the project, in an effort to minimize erosion on the property, the board approved the instillation of a new well system within its consent agenda.
The board was pleased to hear positive SPLOST reports this month during a presentation of the financial report, after several months of receiving lower than anticipated allocations without much explanation from the state. In a review of the past few months of allocation reports, presented by Dr. Troy Davis, director of finance, the system looks to be on a steady incline in that area, with an overall increase in collection revenue.
“As of May, we are 3 percent above our collection revenue as compared to last year,” said Davis, despite being $100,000 over in projected fuel cost for the year.
“In March, we took in $772, 856 in SPLOST allocations, and in April $1.87 million (plus),” Davis said.
According to Davis, SPLOST allocations for May were also well over the $1 million mark, following the previous month’s collection which was marked at “just a little less than the largest collection we’ve ever had at one time.”
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