(Chatham) — Pittsylvania County School leaders this week signed off on the latest round of school capital improvement projects.
Superintendent Doctor Mark Jones gave the School Board an update on the $18 million worth of work that will begin this summer. The first project will add a dozen classrooms at Kentuck Elementary School, allowing them to scrap the mobile units.
“The Kentuck Project will be completed in the middle of 2025,” Jones told the County School Board. “This summer we will also begin projects at Southside and Union Hall Elementary schools. Those will include HVAC and window replacements. They should be completed by the summer of 2025.”
Comfort Systems will do the work at Southside for $6.78 million. At Union Hall, Blair Construction had the low bid of $5.22 million.
Jones says some state money will cut into local cost for one of these projects. “We received about $2.1 million from the State Department of Education to pick up a piece of the cost of the Southside project.
Pittsylvania County Schools last month applied for $26.5 million in state literary loans to begin the latest round of work.
Meantime, Jones says some of the first capital improvement projects they launched last year will wrap up soon. “The new safety vestibules will be completed this summer,” Jones updated the School Board. “It may continue early into the new school year this fall. The gym corridor projects should be finished by Thanksgiving Break.”
Jones says they’re also ready to wrap up another project to make their schools much safer. “Anti-ballistic film is being placed in schools. That’s continuing this summer, with an anticipated completion date around November.”
The film installation is a two-and-a-half million dollar project.
The work is being paid for through a 1% sales tax increase that Pittsylvania County voters approved in 2022. The County has set up a designated fund for the new revenues. The initial estimate anticipated around $50 million revenue from the tax increase. County staff have put in systems to monitor the revenue coming in and the expenditures going out.