E-SPLOST

MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — Renovation projects are officially underway around Baldwin County Schools. Secure vestibules, adding security cameras at each school, and upgrades around the football stadium are the focus areas for the projects.

A guaranteed maximum price for the 1-cent sales tax projects was provided by Parrish Construction Group and approved at last month by the board of education.

The renovations are paid for from the Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (E-SPLOST) that county voters approved last November.

Baldwin County Schools Assistant Superintendent Allen Martin gave an update on the timeline and some “good news” to the board at its meeting earlier this week.

“I’ve been in contact with Parrish and some of the contractors, and we’ve already had contractors in that are measuring the entryways and getting the work ready for that.”

“When we did the community meetings and we were sharing with the community about E-SPLOST projects, safety and security was at the top of the list,” said Baldwin County School Superintendent Dr. Noris Price during the presentation. “A quick way to address that issue is by putting in the security cameras as we construct the secure vestibules.”

Work on securing the vestibules will begin in July with Creekside Elementary. The more labor-intensive vestibule work will take about 25 days with the less intensive renovations taking 15 days, according to the project timeline. System-wide vestibule renovations are scheduled to be completed by Oct. 6.

“We’ll have the secure vestibules starting on time in July,” said Martin. “We won’t finish them all by the time school starts, but they’ve done this before as far as working on some of it after school starts. We will be very cognizant of making sure that we’re not interrupting school for some of those. They’re going to start with the biggest one first. Obviously Creekside is one of the vestibules that is going to take the most work, so they’ll be starting on that building first. As you see Baldwin High is one of the last. It requires the least amount of work. So we’re trying to get the ones that require the most amount of work done first, and try to finish those before school starts.”

Installation of security cameras and card access systems is slated to begin next week with Oak Hill Middle School and the high school. Each installation is slated to take 30 days with two schools being worked on simultaneously, according to the timeline.

“So the secure vestibules and the card readers and all of that will be complete basically, by Dec. 30,” asked school board member John Jackson, District 4.

“Yes sir,” answered Martin. “Hopefully we can get some done sooner, but we want to err on the side of caution just in case.”

Renovations to the football stadium include resurfacing the track and adding aluminum bleachers to the home side of the field. Removal of trees and fence work are among the projects that have already begun.

“You’ll notice that they have, as far as the tree removal and fencing, the start date of June 10, and we’ve hit that date,” said Martin referencing the timeline. “They are down there. They were at the stadium yesterday looking and getting ready for that. As it stands right now, you never can account for Mother Nature, barring any significant weather events they’re pretty confident that we’ll meet all of these deadlines. The track will be open and ready by the time football season starts.”

Resurfacing of the track and installation of the new bleachers are scheduled to be completed on Aug. 4 with the first home football game set for Aug. 19.

A couple of HVAC unit replacements are also on the list of improvements.

The maintenance office server room HVAC replacement is scheduled to begin next week and be completed July 12. The replacement of the Oak Hill unit will begin July 13 and will be finalized before school starts on Thursday, Aug. 4, according to the timeline.