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Hoover school board hires architects for Bluff Park, Hoover High projects

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The Hoover school board on Thursday night hired architects to draw up plans for a 10-classroom addition at Bluff Park Elementary School and locker room expansion for the Hoover High football team.

Bluff Park Elementary School, with slightly more than 600 students, is pretty much at capacity and likely will need more space, Principal Ami Weems said.

A developer is building houses on part of the former Smith Farm property in Bluff Park, and young families with children continue moving into existing houses in the community, Weems said.

“It’s constant to see homes being bought, renovated and updated,” she said. “I live in Bluff Park, and I see it all the time.

With new sidewalks being added and the Bluff Park Village shopping center being renovated and expanded, the community continues to become more attractive for young families, Weems said. “It’s just a great neighborhood.”

Also, Superintendent Dee Fowler said the potential future redrawing of school attendance zones likely would increase the student population at Bluff Park Elementary as well.

Weems said that classrooms at the school are not overwhelmed and that the school has been able to maintain student-teacher ratios that are in line with other Hoover elementary schools. However, keeping those ratios as low as possible is something that has always been important for Hoover City Schools, she said.

Also, some of the support staff at Bluff Park already are sharing space and could benefit greatly from having their own spaces for instruction, Weems said. Some of the staff members who share space include English as a Second Language teachers, occupational therapists, academic coaches and interventionists, she said.

Also, some teachers are working in spaces that weren’t really designed for instruction when the school was built, Weems said.

Which teachers and staff members move into the new space has not been decided, but even if some of the grade-level teachers move into the new spaces, that would free up additional space for support staff, Weems said.

The plan is to put the new single-story addition at the front of the school along Park Avenue, said Matt Wilson, director of operations for the school system.

Previous architectural plans were drawn up that would have moved the school office to part of the new space along Park Avenue and create a new main entrance to the school that fronts the road, but that is no longer the plan, Wilson said. The plan now would keep the office and existing main entrance where they are, he said.

The school board approved a contract for B Group Architecture to draw up the architectural plans, and the goal is to get the addition built and opened by the fall of 2023, Wilson said.

Weems said it was exciting for her just to see the architectural contract get approved. “That’s progress,” she said.

Teachers and staff have a lot of innovative ideas that they don’t have the space to do, she said.

HOOVER FOOTBALL LOCKER ROOM

At Hoover High, the plan is to convert some of the football coaching offices into more locker room space for the football team. There currently are about 90 lockers but 140 to 150 football players in grades 10-12, Athletic Director Andy Urban said.

The plan is to bring in 140 to 150 new lockers, allowing all sophomores, juniors and seniors to be in the same locker room, Urban said.

That also will allow the freshmen and some of the physical education students to move into the current junior varsity locker room, he said.

Also, the renovation project will expand the shower area from eight shower heads to about 20 and at least double the bathroom facilities that currently include two urinals and two toilets, Urban said.

There also will be some renovation and expansion of the coaches’ locker room, he said.

The entire project is expected to cost about $350,000 to $500,000, and about $300,000 to $350,000 of that will come from the Buccaneer Touchdown Club, Urban said. The rest will come from athletic department money raised through sponsorships, he said.

The Buccaneer Touchdown Club still has to raise its portion of the money, he said.

The goal is to get drawings back from Lathan and Associates by the end of January and get to work on the project immediately, Urban said. He would like to have it completed by the end of the next football season, he said. The football team likely will have to come up with a temporary locker room solution during construction, he said.

In other business Thursday night, the Hoover school board:

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