King: New K-8 School Cannot Move Forward Under Current Bond

In a report to the Putnam County Commission Monday night, Director of Schools Corby King said the system’s new K-8 school cannot move forward under the current bond.

The county commission approved a $44.7 million bond to fund the project last year. King said the project cost is now estimated at about $61 million.

“We can’t build a K-8 with that price,” King said. “What we don’t know and suspect that we will have a special called board meeting this week, the 30 days to accept or reject the bid is up Thursday, so the school board members still have some decisions to make.”

Only one company submitted a bid for the project. King said it priced the project at $336 a square foot, about $100 more than originally budgeted. King said the school board could either reject the bid and pause the project or downsize to a K-4 school.

“We have to make a decision on whether or not we reject and just try to push the brakes here and say we are going to pause and come back and try to rebid this thing in six to 12 months,” King said. “In talking to architects subs and others, frankly they don’t see a lot of change in six to 12 months in inflation. (…) Another consideration that they have is if we try to move forward with the preK-4. We’re still struggling to find that.”

King said if a K-4 school did move forward, the bond would still not cover the entire project. King said the school system would need to find an additional $3.5 million.

“We do have $3 million that we were putting in to building the new Virtual Instruction Building,” King said. “That’s something that the board has to consider. So we put that money with the bond so that we can build a K-4, and I don’t know if that is where we are going. We still have a lot of I don’t knows.”

The new Park View School was to be built in the south west portion of the county near Lee Seminary Road. The school would have answered the system’s need for more classroom space. King said the future goal is to avoid using portable classrooms.

“It’s hard to predict what we are going to have when we come back to school Thursday or next week,” King said. “If we have that one to two percent growth, then we will be fine. We’ve projected a five percent and 10 percent growth. If we have five percent over the next year, we are still okay. We’re not going to have to panic. If we get 10 percent, we are going to be very tight in some places.”

King said the school board has three years to use the current bond. King closed his update to the commission with no action from commissioners.