Proposed School Building Updates

At the Pickens County Board of Education meeting last night, Operations Director Rick Little submitted a five-year facility plan detailing existing building work that needs to be done in order of urgency at Pickens County Schools. The top two facility issues are at Tate Elementary School and Jasper Elementary School. At J.E.S. various problems were cited by the architect who composed the report. Included repairs are lighting, window replacement, drop ceilings, floors and HVAC. At T.E.S., the cafeteria and kitchen are aged and in need of replacement.

Pickens County has $3 million in state funds set aside to address facility problems. The only catch is that the county must match those funds to receive them. Those matching funds are collected in SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) taxes, however, no new taxes are slated to cover these costs as they will be derived from the existing SPLOST collection.

After the meeting ended, Superintendent Perry and board members traveled to J.E.S. and T.E.S. for a tour to see firsthand the projects outlined. Friday afternoon Little stated that after viewing the facilities, board members decided to submit both of the top two schools for consideration for the funds.

The deadline for submitting applications for these funds is August 15. Although there are seven schools in the county and all have areas to be addressed, none of the priorities are set in stone until approval is received. Work on both schools is slated to begin at the end of the current school year contingent upon there being no changes to the proposed plan.