STARKVILLE – A Monday site meeting with contractors will mark the first concrete step in Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District’s efforts to build a new Starkville High School.
And while the total cost of the project – and its potential impact on taxpayers in the school district – has yet to be nailed down for certain, Superintendent Tony McGee is certain the build will be worth it for the community.
“We know that people look to move to a community, there’s areas they look for: health care, safety and public education,” McGee told The Dispatch on Thursday. “… (Oktibbeha County) has done a good job of securing Baptist (Memorial Health Care) to come in here to strengthen their health care. The police department, sheriff’s department, Mississippi State, our (school resource officers) have done a tremendous job with safety. The last piece of that is to really build a high school our community can be proud of.”
The new high school will be located on the north edge of Mississippi State University’s campus, adjacent to the district’s Partnership Middle School on a tract donated by the university valued between $5 million and $10 million.
McGee said the cost of constructing the school is estimated somewhere between $118 million and $122 million. To fund it, the district has a $4 million appropriation from the state legislature on hand and the capacity to borrow up to $125 million in bonds, an increase from the original $87 million the district originally intended to borrow.
McGee said contractors will spend the next month reviewing design documents, which are at least 80% complete, to present a more certain estimate for the construction at the SOCSD Board of Trustees regular meeting May 12.
That will also give the board a better idea of how much the district will need to borrow and what impact it may have on taxpayers, he said.
“There will be a small increase in taxes,” McGee said. “I say small. I use that word loosely because I don’t know exactly what it will be. But there will be.”
However, McGee hopes other avenues of funding may ease that burden.
“We’re always seeking state dollars or grant dollars, and so we will continue to try to look for other sources of money (so) that maybe the local taxpayer doesn’t have to produce,” he said.
District 43 Rep. Rob Roberson, R-Starkville, who chairs the House Education Committee, told The Dispatch earlier this month he intends to continue seeking funding for the school’s construction in future sessions.
“My goal is for this school here to be a pivot point so that many of our other communities can either use it as a model for leadership or also, if we have a situation where we have grown to a point where we can accept other kids from other areas to help (them), I want us to be in a position to do that,” Roberson said. “It takes money to do that.”
Monday’s meeting with contractors, McGee said, will entail walking the site to survey the property lines and familiarize the contractor with daily traffic patterns for Partnership, as construction will likely continue as the school is still in session.
If everything goes to plan, he said initial site work should begin by the end of this month or early May to hopefully be completed in time for the 2028-2029 school year.
“It’ll be exciting to see maybe some dirt move and maybe a tree or two fall. It kind of makes real when you start to see some of that,” McGee said. “We’ve been talking about it now for a couple years.”
What is and isn’t in the plans?
Plans for the campus, which will serve the district’s ninth- through 12th-grade students, include a classroom building, cafeteria and gymnasium as well as a field house and practice facilities for outdoor sports.
Housing practice facilities on campus, McGee said, prevents the district from bussing students each day between the school and the current high school campus on Yellow Jacket Drive. While current facilities will still be used for outdoor gamedays and events, all indoor games will be played at the new gymnasium.
“We’re really not trying to transport 100 football players back and forth every day,” he said.
A speciality state high school – an idea floated multiple times by Roberson after a now-dead effort to relocate the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science to the planned campus – is not included in plans, McGee said.
“This is our specialty school,” he said. “(SOCSD) is not looking to expand past our high school. If anything arises outside of that, that’s a separate (thing).”
McGee said none of the district’s funding, including the $4 million legislative appropriation, will be used for anything other than the SHS construction, though he did leave the door open for a future partnership at the campus if another entity, like the legislature for example, pursues it.
“I think that just widens the opportunities for our boys and girls,” he said. “Our job is to give them as many opportunities as possible, whether that’s placing them on a college campus, building a specialty school, whatever that may be. … If somebody else wanted to build one and let us use it, we’ll be glad to.”
The new SHS, McGee said, aims to replicate the success of Partnership, which combines the traditional public school education with the resources of the university, at the high school level.
“By putting a high school campus on there, it changes the narrative from, ‘Are kids ready to go to college?’ to ‘How far can they go before they graduate high school?’” McGee said. “They’re on that college campus every day. They’re exposed to more research. They’re exposed to more college-level coursework.
“… We want to see how far a child can go before he or she ever gets out of high school and maybe be a model for the nation,” he added.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 39 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
