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Southampton County Public Schools is moving forward with its original plan to develop a Community/Parent Resource Center and a Student Health & Education Building as separate facilities after learning that a plan to use grant funds to merge the projects would not be approved by the state. 

School Board Vice Chair Denise Bunn had noted at the board’s Aug. 12 meeting that in the face of significant cuts having to be made to both building projects to try to get them under budget, “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.”

School Board Member Brandon Rodgers asked SCPS Superintendent Dr. Gwendolyn P. Shannon at the same meeting if the grant money funding the two building projects would still be available if the two projects were combined into one.

Shannon said, “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.”

Later in that meeting, School Board Chair Dr. Deborah Goodwyn established an ad hoc facilities committee, with Bunn serving as chair and Rodgers serving as the second committee member from the board.

At the school board’s Sept. 9 meeting, Bunn noted that since the board’s last meeting, she and Rodgers had met with architectural firm Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates multiple times.

“One of the things we had to do first was we had the concept of combining and doing one building as opposed to two projects,” she said. “And checking with the state, we had to stick with our original two separate buildings. So that’s why we went ahead and tried to move forward as quickly as possible.

“The Parent Resource Center is pretty much in line with the design that we saw last time,” she continued. “The cost savings came from some smaller things, like taking out walls within it, making it more of an open concept, but that is under budget.

“Then for the Student Health Building, we have looked at reducing the square footage, and (the architect) is working on that right now. We’ll meet with him again, and then hopefully as soon as we get that within budget, we’ll move forward and get that to bid.”

The Community/Parent Resource Center is slated to be located next to Central Office and has had a projected budget of $1 million, and the Student Health & Education Building, slated to be built behind Southampton High School next to the tennis courts, has had a projected budget of $750,000.