Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The Southampton County School Board and Southampton County Public Schools administration moved in the direction Monday, Aug. 12, of combining two building projects under development into one due to the budget overages they had been encountering with both projects.

Joshua C. Bower, a representative from the architectural firm Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates, addressed the board Aug. 12 and spent a good portion of the capital projects update highlighting projected cuts to both projects in order to reduce the overages.

The Community/Parent Resource Center, slated to be located next to Central Office, has a projected budget of $1 million, and the projected cost entering the board’s Aug. 12 meeting was $1,278,115.

With potential cost reductions including installing asphalt shingles, deleting gypsum ceiling, deleting one toilet room, deleting a kitchenette, installing vinyl windows and installing a concrete floor at grade, the projected cost could be reduced by $157,830.

The Student Health & Education Building, slated to be built behind Southampton High School next to the tennis courts, has a projected budget of $750,000, and the projected cost entering the Aug. 12 meeting was $1,826,954.

Some of the ways Bower proposed to reduce the overage included not providing air conditioning in the building, reducing the height of the structure, reducing the building size, deleting gyp/acoustical ceilings and not fitting out the instructional rooms or laundry. 

Even with all the cost reductions Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates proposed, the Student Health & Education Building project was still over budget.

School Board Member Denise Bunn told Bower, “I guess my thought with it is we’ve given you an impossible project. We gave you a building and gave you a budget for something that’s not possible within that budget. And looking at this, of course, we’re trying to do two projects at the same time.”

She said, “I think somebody else may have mentioned at the last meeting, we really have enough money to do one project well or to do two and to do a lot of cutting to them and not have a good product by the time we’re finished.

“So I guess my question to the other board members would be, at this point, do we still want to try and move forward with two projects, or do we put all of our money into one project and do one project well?” she said. “Because to me to have the Student Health Building, the beauty of the elevated height is it makes it more accessible for the community.”

She noted that it would open the building up to be able to host children for recreation even outside of school.

“It’s things that as good stewards of the county, we should be providing,” she said. “So my thought is if we’re going to do the building, let’s do it well and make sure that it’s what’s needed for the children and for the athletics and the extra things that we envisioned in the beginning.”

She said, “I would just be a fan of let’s do one project well.”

Board Chair Dr. Deborah Goodwyn said, “What do you think about having the Parent Resource Center housed in the Student Education Building? Would that be a possibility so that we do have one building and then just have the Parent Resource Center housed in this one building?”

Bunn said she had thought of that possibility as well.

“And it may actually be a good option because then if you have parents in, doing things in the Parent Resource Building, you have, in essence, a basketball court right beside it,” she said, noting that children could be shooting basketball while their parents are busy in the PRB.

Board Member Brandon Rodgers asked SCPS Superintendent Dr. Gwendolyn P. Shannon, “Does that make sense in your head, thinking operationally, moving the Parent Resource Center from right beside Central Office to possibly over here at the high school? Could that be something that works?”

Shannon expressed support for the idea of not trying to do two projects that lack key features, like air conditioning, and she noted how combining the projects could make the one building more child-friendly.

“I really do think that we should do one project well,” she said.

Rodgers also asked if the grant money funding the two building projects would still be available if the two projects were combined into one.

“As far as the funding is concerned, that would require some type of an amendment, and I really can’t speak to whether or not the state would or would not approve an amendment of that type,” Shannon said.

Bunn said, “If we put the Parent Resource Center in (the Student Health & Education Building), it may be easier to amend it because we’d still be doing both projects, we’re just combining them on the same site, if we were to go (with) that option.”

“I agree that perhaps we could make a case for housing the Parent Resource Center in the education building,” Goodwyn said. “And again, to me, it makes sense to put them together. It would be good use of the space. It could make it more child-friendly. It would give the Parent Resource Center a larger space; if they wanted to have larger, group activities, they would have the space to do that. It would have space for small meetings, so we would be satisfying the same need that we proposed before with just housing everything in this one building that has air conditioning, and I think it makes everything more functional.”

Rodgers asked Bower if it would be possible to do what the board was proposing on the previously agreed upon schedule.

Bower said that was a good question and noted that the firm would begin work on this new proposal the next morning and would make every effort to complete the project on time.

Shannon and Bower discussed increasing the square footage of the Student Health & Education Building under the assumption that the space previously set to have been the weight room will now be the Parent Resource Center.

Goodwyn established an ad hoc facilities committee, asking Bunn to serve as the chair and Rodgers to serve as the second committee member from the board. They both agreed to the roles.

“So then, yes, we will have the facilities committee that would work with the superintendent and her designated architect to move this along so that we will be on budget and on time,” Goodwyn said. “And these two persons will be empowered to represent the board.”