Photo by Jon Anderson
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This boys bathroom at Green Valley Elementary School is one of many slated for renovations at four Hoover schools over the summer of 2022.
The Hoover school board on Tuesday agreed to do about $4 million worth of renovations to bathrooms and locker rooms at four Hoover schools.
All the schools — Green Valley, Gwin and Rocky Ridge elementary schools and Simmons Middle School — are ones that Hoover inherited from the Jefferson County school system when the Hoover school system was formed in 1988, and most of the bathrooms have not had significant upgrades, said Matt Wilson, operations director for the school system.
There may have been some fixture and lighting upgrades here and there, but not the total overhaul that this will be, Wilson said.
All the student bathrooms will be completely redone, including new toilets, urinals, stalls, sinks, flooring and ceilings, he said.
The school board two years ago set aside $2.5 million for the bathroom upgrades but held off on doing them because labor and materials shortages were increasing construction costs, Chief Financial Officer Michele McCay told the board Tuesday.
But “we’re at a point right now I don’t think we can wait any longer,” McCay said.
When the school board sought bids for the upgrades this year, only one company, Taylor and Miree Construction, submitted a bid for the job, and it came in at $4.6 million, Wilson said.
Because there was only one bidder, the school system was able to negotiate with the company, change some aspects of the jobs and get the cost down by $642,000 to $3,997,000, he said.
Some of the changes included having one job superintendent instead of four, changing from drywall ceilings to drop ceilings and refurbishing the lockers at Simmons Middle School instead of buying new ones, Wilson said. The lockers still are in good shape but need to be repainted, he said.
McCay said the extra money for the bathroom upgrades will have to come out of school system reserves but said new financial projections indicate the school system still will have 7.5 months’ worth of reserves in seven years. She is comfortable as long as the school system has at least five months’ worth of reserves, she said.
“I do think going into reserves for this particular project is well worth the investment and the return,” she said.
Wilson said he will work to complete the contracts with Taylor and Miree Construction as soon as possible and get the project moving so that work can begin as soon as students leave for summer break and be finished when school starts back in August, barring significant material shortages.
The school board called a special meeting for Tuesday to get the ball rolling. “Every day counts,” Wilson said.
