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Board of education pushes along capital plan
Published Thursday, October 2, 2008
The Shelby County Board of Education recently set into motion renovations aimed at eliminating overcrowding and portable classrooms at several of its schools.
The board unanimously approved emergency renovations at Bradford Health System’s Pelham location, which was vacated last month. The board purchased the site for $2.5 million in November 2006 to transform it into the new Linda Nolen Learning Center, which houses the school system’s special education programs.
“Time is a real factor with that project because we need to have the new center complete by the first of the year,” said facilities coordinator Randy Reeves. “Declaring emergency renovations means we are free to move forward without pricing the project through a formal bidding process.”
Reeves said while they don’t know the total cost of the project, the budget is set at $500,000. Plans for the 41,500–square–foot facility, built in 1986, include tearing down walls to create classrooms out of dormitories and demolishing other wings to create offices and open areas for administrative and support staff, Reeves said.
He said once the new center is complete, about 50 special education and support personnel will move in so the current LNLC can be transformed into a sixth–grade center for Thompson Middle School.
The sixth–grade project also has a budget of $500,000 but Reeves said changes wouldn’t be as extensive.
“There’ll be more cosmetic changes at the old Linda Nolen center –– things like putting in new tiling and repainting. We’ll also have to wait on our instruction administrators to decide whether or not we need to put in a library or band room for example,” he said.
Thompson Intermediate School provides instruction to 499 fifth–grade students who would move to the center for the 2009 school year.
Shelby County Schools’ spokeswoman Cindy Warner said this is one of several components designed to get kids back in traditional classrooms.
“The goal is to eliminate up to 20 portables next year through moving the sixth–grade class,” Warner said. “We’d like to eliminate all 26 but just this year we’ve added four to keep up with growth.”
Since August, the system opened Helena Middle School to thin the student population at Riverchase Middle. It also opened Calera High School and completed renovations to Calera Middle School to free up space for students in that city. Overall, the capital improvement plan aims to discard 108 portable classrooms over five years.
Comments
Posted by socialchild (anonymous) on October 3, 2008 at 9:38 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The problem with Shelby BOE planning has been that they plan for the present, not for the future. TMS was too small by even the most conservative estimates. The school outgrew its building in two years. Meadow View Elementary was built with 8 fewer classrooms than the plans called for because of cost overruns due to design elements that had no practical use, and the school outgrew the building in four years. An aesthetically pleasing design is OK, but form should follow function--sacrificing 8 classroom in favor of a bloody great tower and some fru-fru river rock was stupid. Especially since the ESL students have class in a storage closet and the GRC students have to walk in the rain to a trailer (euphemistically called a Learning Cottage).
Posted by BamaNana5 (anonymous) on October 3, 2008 at 3:51 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Shelby BOE is the Top Dog of euphemisism ! They practically invented the idea!! Over ONE HUNDRED learning cottages ???? in this school system while we build "towers" on elementary schools should be alarming to parents - let them know that no elementary school needs a "tower." Give us plain buildings with enough classrooms, without having to put 2 teachers in a room as at Calera Elem., and a trailer park at other campuses!!
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