Work is progressing smoothly for the Lowndes County School District’s new career technical center, according to Superintendent Lynn Wright.
The facility’s construction started in the fall, after the school board awarded an $11.1 million contract to Columbus-based West Brothers Construction.
Wright said the career technical center, located on Lehmberg Road near Lowndes Funeral Home, should be finished in late 2017 or early 2018 and will likely open in the fall for the start of the 2018-19 school year.
He said crews are working on pouring concrete for a storm shelter in the center’s interior and will build the rest of the facility around it. The shelter will also double as an auditorium.
Wright said he hopes the center will start out serving about 250 students, eventually increasing to about 500 students, and offer space for adult classes at night.
“We hope to be offering about 14 courses at the career tech center,” Wright said. “We’ll have everything from conventional courses like building, welding and electricity, to the manufacturing skills that would be applicable to the industries we have here.”
One of the most important aspects of the career tech center, Wright said, is that it will allow all of the district’s vocational education courses to be offered in one centralized location. At the moment, the district offers two to three classes at each campus, but students can only take classes available at their school. Wright said time constraints prevent the district from bussing students from campus to campus.
“By having a central site, it opens everything up for all our students,” Wright said.
Energy audit
In other business, the board voted 4-0, with board member Brian Clark abstaining, to contract with Schneider Electric Buildings Americas to perform an energy audit of the district’s facilities.
LCSD Chief Financial Officer Kenneth Hughes said the district has a “tremendous energy cost” that can likely be reduced with a few options. He said Schneider Electric, a Texas-based energy company, can review the district’s usage and facilities and create a report with recommendations on how to improve energy efficiency.
Hughes said Schneider Electric has already performed a preliminary audit to identify some simple steps the district could take to improve energy usage.
“There’s some real easy savings here that we can do, and that’s going to be to swap out all of our lighting for LED lighting (and) build in automation to where we can get a handle on running our HVAC systems,” he said. “And we’ve got 76 or 78 HVAC units that are 16 years or older. We’re going to replace those in the next few years, whether its one-by-one or we lump them all together.”
According to a Schneider Electric representative at the meeting, the district spent roughly $1.3 million on energy costs from October 2015 to October 2016.
With the audit, Schneider Electric will perform a more in-depth analysis to recommend more in-depth cost saving measures. Hughes said if the district works with Schneider Electric to enact any audit recommendations, the company will waive the $175,000 contract fee.
During discussion, Clark said he thought it would be good for the district to consider ways to become more energy efficient.
“I think if the district can save some money and be more energy efficient, it’s a great thing,” Clark said.
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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