Franklin County Public Schools continues to make slow but steady progress toward a career and technical education facility.
At its Nov. 14 regular meeting, the school board approved a contract with Moseley Architects to perform a CTE feasibility study to assess the practicality and develop a rough sketch of the project. Gills Creek District school board representative Jon Atchue indicated it will take about 16 weeks to complete the feasibility study.
“Importantly, the contract locks the rate for services. As we know … the costs continue to go up as we all are standing here,” Franklin County Public Schools Superintendent Bernice Cobbs said Nov. 14.
Starting now should also allow the division to apply for competitive Virginia construction grants that will soon begin accepting applications.
“The school board’s vision for how CTE will be addressed needs to be developed in order to have a clear direction for the board of supervisors for funding purposes,” Cobbs added.
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Union Hall District representative P.D. Hambrick — who has been on the board for the division’s previous attempts to move forward with a CTE facility project — was eager to approve the contract and get going.
“I would just like to say, I’ve been working on this for 19 years and I’m just really anxious to see something. So I move for approval,” Hambrick said.
However, Atchue had some questions before the vote that approved the contract, chiefly how the members of the project’s steering committee will be selected.
The committee, for which Atchue has volunteered, will likely include a couple of Franklin County supervisors and school board members. The committee will not be finalized until the school board’s next meeting.
In December, the school board will hold a joint meeting with the Franklin County Board of Supervisors. The CTE project is sure to come up during the joint meeting.
The school board members ultimately voted unanimously in favor of approving the contract, but waiting to finalize the committee will limit the amount of information ready for the joint meeting, according to the initial feasibility study steps outlined Nov. 14 by Moseley Architects Principle Jim Henderson.
“The initial steps would be [to] form a smaller committee, do some initial work but not go too far down the road, and then pretty quickly out of the gate start to have some open sessions where we could get that [community] feedback,” Henderson said.
Atchue said it will be important to notify the supervisors about the project’s progress ahead of the joint meeting.
“I think we need to give them a heads up on what we’ll have ready for that meeting and what we won’t have ready so that there are no missed expectations,” Atchue said.
Following the vote to approve the contract with Moseley, Franklin County Public Schools Director of Operations Jason Guilliams and the division’s construction manager, Darryl Spencer, and touched on some of the division’s other ongoing projects, including the new HVAC units for Sontag and Glade Hill Elementary Schools. Originally slated for delivery and installation over the summer, both units have experienced delays. The Sontag unit has been delayed again, Spencer said, but he had some good news to share, too.
“At Glade Hill we finally got the rooftop unit and it is installed and operational,” Spencer said.
Meanwhile, Guilliams complimented the division’s maintenance department and announced that, after filling many of its open bus driver positions, the division was down to six open contracts.
“That’s a big positive for us,” Guilliams said. “Most of you probably know that … our supervisor of transportation, Cherie Whitlow … moved back to an assistant principal-ship … but we have hired and promoted within and Jeff Hodges is now our transportation supervisor. … We’re also pleased to announce, as of today, [we are] fully staffed for our mechanics.”
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