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Looking to the future

DECATUR



The Decatur School Board received mixed news on the state of its facilities at Monday’s meeting.

One the one hand, the facilities — including three more than 30 years old — are in relatively good shape, according to Robb Sidebottom with Gallagher Construction Services.

He said it was hard to find major issues during a recent district-wide facilities assessment.

“It’s kind of tough because you guys do such a great job with your buildings. I assess a lot of building across the state, and yours are wonderful,” he said.

But referring back to recent enrollment projection and facility capacity reports, which showed growing enrollment and capacity issues at the middle and high school campuses, he said the board will have to begin planning soon for how they want to address facility issues.

“I can’t implore you enough to get started with planning, because no matter how you slice it, you’re going to need some room in a few years, and it’s a few years process. So you can always plan and do nothing with the plan if you don’t need it, but you can’t not plan and then implement something,” Sidebottom said.

He went campus by campus pointing out what he called mainly “minor issues” that would need to be addressed as part of a long-term plan. Most common issues were minor interior wall repairs, bringing restroom fixtures into ADA compliance and sealants applied to expansion joints, all of which were identified at five of the six campuses. Window upgrades and flooring repair/ replacement were also recommended as part of long-range planning at multiple campuses.

The oldest campus in the district, the 50-year-old McCarroll Middle School, had the most facility and capacity issues.

“If we had to pick out a building for you all to focus on for a long-term plan, I will agree that McCarroll is it,” Sidebottom said. “It needs to be addressed. It’s the elephant in the room, you can’t avoid that, but the sky isn’t falling because you all take such good care of that building.”

He said the district could be provided with “a rough budget” to replace a campus like McCarroll as well as a budget to renovate and expand the facility.

He concluded his presentation by asking the board to begin looking at options to accommodate expected growth as soon as possible. Those options could include moving grade levels around at campuses to make them more efficient, adding classrooms at one or more facilities or planning on building a new school campus.

The board will likely hold a workshop to begin looking at those options in April.

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