Bullock County School Improvements Expected to Save District $2.7 Million
If you take a walk inside some of the classrooms in the Bullock County School District, you would see areas with needed improvements.
Outdated A.C units, dim lighting, and windows with holes are in most of the rooms, and leaky roofs provide covering.
That is expected to change in summer 2019.
“Right now, the Board of Education has begun a comprehensive campus improvement project,” Bullock County Schools Superintendent Dr. Christopher Blair says.
The Bullock County School System is joining with Birmingham-based Schneider Electric
to bring some upgrades to the classrooms and lunchrooms.
“It’s going to include ensuring that the roofing, the lighting, that the windows, our A.C. units and H-VAC units are operating at full capacity,” Blair says.
The renovation project is expected to cost about $3.2 million dollars with funding coming from a lease purchase agreement.
Union Springs Elementary, South Highlands Middle, Bullock County High, and other school buildings in the district will benefit.
“You know, the building is only as good the roof that is over their head,” Schneider Electric’s Larry Perrin says. “So making sure that if we’re gonna make all these other upgrades the roof wasn’t going to be something that was going to leak in to these new environments that we were improving.”
The renovations are expected to save the district an estimated $2.7 million over a 20-year period.
“With these savings, portions are used to pay for the savings project of the energy conservation project but we’re also going to use those savings so that twenty years from now, we are in a better financial position to build new schools,” Blair says.
“When we came in we wanted to find ways to save their money on their utility budget, phone bills, take that money and reapply it into the buildings,” Perrin says.
Renovations will begin this summer and are expected to be finished by the fall semester.
