BY MARK J. CRAWFORD
Telegraph Editor
STARKE — With the singular project on the school district’s priority list under construction, Operations Director Jeff Edison told the school board it’s time to update the five-year plan with new priorities.
In order to access funding, those projects need to be in the five-year plan.
If one of those is to be a new facility for the middle school, high school and technical college, the district is going to have to consider eliminating some of its unused student stations. Otherwise, Edison said the state would be skeptical of approving funds for new construction.
A new junior/senior high and college facility would equate to 1,700 student stations, Edison said. The state would want to know thy the district has hundreds of unfilled student stations, regardless of where those stations are located. The state would look at overall capacity.
He said the district must consider how to consider reducing the stations it has by finding a use for that space. He used the district offices as an example. Those offices are the former Starke Elementary School. Moving the district offices there eliminated student stations.
Another way is by no spending money to replace buildings, including those at the district office. Damage to Building 4 from recent flooding was not repaired.
Edison said the district has good buildings elsewhere in the county, and district offices could fill them. At the same time, they would be using up student stations and making way for improvements.
The district needs to begin making plans and evaluating costs to make this happen.
As older facilities are vacated, they will deteriorate, Edison said, imaging the current district offices as space to expand parking for the high school. As buildings are vacated, they should be torn down, he said.
“There are some buildings here that need to need to go because they’re going to cost this district a lot of money in a few years. One way or another, they’re going to cost this district a lot of money. And so, what do you want to spend that money on? You want to spend that money chasing old facilities? Or do you want to spend that money chasing new facilities?”
Some other possible projects for the priority list include paving the track, improvements to the field house and track house, replacing the gutters at Starke Elementary School, and paving the parking lots at Starke Elementary and the bus barn. School board members were invited to consider additions to the list and bring them to a future meeting.
W/hat gets accomplished will depend upon available funding, so Edison stressed that conversations about planning need to take place alongside building the budget each year.
Being on the list does not mean the projects will occur in any order or ever come to fruition. But they must be on the list to be eligible for outside funding.
