By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

ALABASTER – The Alabaster Board of Education will have a home at Alabaster City Hall until it moves into the current Thompson Intermediate School building after the Alabaster City Council approved a lease extension with the city school system on Oct. 27.

The council voted unanimously during the meeting to approve a rental extension with the city school system to lease about 4,400 square feet on the second floor of the Alabaster City Hall building off Municipal Way through 2017.

In May 2013, the School Board voted to lease about 4,400 square feet on the second floor of the Alabaster City Hall building off Municipal Way for three years at a rental rate to the city of about $3,800 per month.

In late September, the School Board voted to up its monthly rental payments to the city by about $1,200 to $5,000.

The school system’s rental payments cover rent and all utility costs except phone lines.

“Their lease wasn’t up. They just have a better idea of when they might be moving into a new facility, and they came to us,” Alabaster Mayor Marty Handlon said, noting the School Board voluntarily upped its rental payments to the city.

When the city was constructing the City Hall building in 2013, it added an additional $487,758.16 to the project cost to build out and furnish the second floor to house the school board.

Before the school system moved its central office to the City Hall building, it was housed in an office condominium off Alabama 119 South.

The Alabaster City School System soon will break ground on a new 360,000-square-foot high school and athletic facility on currently vacant land between Thompson Road and Kent Dairy Road. Once the new high school is constructed, the current high school will become a middle school and sixth-grade center and the current middle school will become an intermediate school.

Once students are out of the current intermediate school on Alabama 119, ACS plans to move its central office into the building.