STARKVILLE – The Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District could borrow up to $125 million to build its new high school.
The board of trustees during a June 17 meeting unanimously approved a resolution of intent to issue up to $125 million in bonds to fund construction of the new school. That is a $39 million increase to the $86 million the district already had the capacity to borrow for the project.
Communications Director Haley Montgomery said the higher figure accounts for rising construction costs.
“$86 million is not a lot of money when you’re building a high school in today’s building market,” Montgomery told The Dispatch on Wednesday. “Even five years ago, certainly 10 years ago, that number would have gotten you a lot further. But particularly since COVID, we’ve seen building materials increase in cost (and) construction costs increase with both manpower and those materials.”
Along with building costs, Board President Cassandra Palmer said the district is also taking the costs of programming under consideration with the increase.
“Part of it is, when you do a big project like this, you want to make sure that you do your best with what the needs are to provide as much … as possible within what you can afford,” she said. “That’s what we’re trying to do as far as programming.”
Unless 20% of registered voters in the school district sign and file a petition requesting a bond election before the July 8 deadline, the board will take final action on approving the issuance of the bonds at a 6 p.m. meeting the same day, according to the resolution.
Montgomery said there’s still no timeline for the high school’s construction as the project is still in its “early days,” though the district is working with an architectural firm and a construction manager to develop a plan. The resolution of intent, she said, gives the board a better idea of the budget that will fund the plan.
“We’ve been working … on the start, just the very early stages of programming for the high school, and what that looks like,” she said. “But we are not at a place where we have any decisions at all on the timeframe, on the actual program of work, anything like that. It’s still pretty early days, but a lot of that is contingent on what our budget is, and this is one of the first steps in determining that figure.”
Montgomery said the need for a new high school, which aims to provide more targeted programming and room for the district to grow, has been a longstanding concern for the district. The current Starkville High School houses 1,400 students and has had several additions over the years. Montgomery described SHS as “not as functional as it could be.”
“Bottom line, it’s just wall-to-wall,” she said. “We’re managing it, but we’ve needed to look at that type of expansion for a while. That is what we’ve been thinking about for a number of years. … It’s kind of the next thing that has become the more pressing issue to address in the district.”
The new high school could potentially share space with Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science if the legislature approves Mississippi State University’s plan to house and operate the residential high school near the Partnership Middle School on its campus. The university’s proposal, which has been recommended for approval by the State Board of Education, includes MSMS sharing multiple facilities with SHS students.
Palmer said the board will cross that bridge in planning if and when it arrives.
“We as a board are operating on what we have control over and what we know,” she said.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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