By MOLLY DAVIDSON / Staff Writer

PELHAM—Plans for new offices for the Pelham City Schools central office staff are moving forward, HOAR Program Management confirmed during a Nov. 17 City Council work session.

In an Oct. 20 agreement with the city, the Board of Education will rent the currently vacant second floor of the Pelham Water Administration building for $3,900 each month.

With the help of PCS construction management group, HOAR Program Management, the more than 4,000-square-foot space will be turned into offices for the school system’s central office staff. The PCS central office staff currently occupies a roughly 2,600-square-foot space below Pelham City Hall.

“Right now we just think it’s important that each of our department heads have a bit of their own space,” BOE President Rick Rhoades said in a Nov. 21 phone interview. “We also want to have more small and large group meeting space.”

Tentative drawings for the new PCS central office include individual offices, conference rooms and a large meeting room which Rhoades said could be used for board meetings and workshops.

“We can configure it the way we want it to be,” Rhoades said of the currently unoccupied second floor of the Water Administration building.

Rhoades said he hopes to see the project completed and central office staff moved into the new space as early as January 2015. However, the second floor of the Water Administration building will likely not be the permanent home of the PCS central office.

With the city’s future plans to build a new library, PCS is eyeing the current library building as the next home for the central office.

“We think it’s a great location,” Rhoades said, noting its centralized location. “It really has everything we could want… It really would make a great central office space.”