Overton Schools To Use $14 Million Loan From County For Renovations

Overton County Schools will use a $14 million loan from the county for renovations to four schools.

School Director Donnie Holman said the money is going to be put toward adding classrooms to Allons, Hilham and Rickman Elementary Schools. He said the money will also be used for expanding and renovating the Livingston Academy lunch room. Holman said this was part of a larger project started last year.

“The board and I, we visited each school,” Holman said. “We had each principal come up with a large thorough list of big items down to small items of need for their physical plant.”

Holman said the next step will be to start the bidding process for the work. Holman said if the $14 million is not enough to complete all the projects, the Board is prepared to use money from their fund balance to cover the rest of the costs.

Holman said the school board was able to address some of those needs using grant money as well as funds from COVID. Holman said there currently is no timeline for the project.

He said they will now address the large needs of the schools with these funds.

“We tried to address as many of the small things on the list as we could to try and get those items off the list,” Holman said. “Also, every school system was fortunate enough to have ESSER money that we were allowed to use for building upgrades and repairs and things. So, we used our ESSER money as widely as we could. We have been able to knock many of those things off our needs list. Now we are down to a fairly clear list.”

The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) was a grant program to help schools recover from the COVID epidemic.

“We’re still in the fiscal part of this right now,” Holman said. “It’ll be a while before ground is broke on anything by any means. We’re still in the very beginning stages of this.”