Public gets sneak peek at how new Bibb schools will look

The public got a glimpse Thursday night of what the new Northeast High School and Appling Middle School facility will look like once it’s completed.

An outdoor classroom, an auditorium that can seat 600, plenty of windows, three courtyards and long slender couches on the opposite side of a hallway from student lockers are among features of the new facility’s design presented at the regular Bibb County Board of Education meeting.

The design for the $43 million project on Upper River Road was submitted to the Georgia Department of Education last week, said Trey Wood, who represented WM2A design firm.

“Construction on the high school will start next summer and it will take about a year,” Wood said, adding that classes would start there in fall of 2019.

The middle school will be completed in time for classes to start in the new building by fall 2020.

The latest cost estimate for the facility was $44.2 million, but Wood said talks are in process to reduce that number before an updated estimate is presented in September.

The board voted unanimously to spend more than an hour behind closed doors to eat dinner in a meeting about pending litigation, personnel and land acquisition.

In other business, the board voted to renew an agreement it has had with the Medical Center, Navicent Health, since 1994.

Only this time, 22 new medical staff members will be hired by Navicent so that there is one in each elementary school, the district’s chief financial officer Ron Collier said.

Bibb County schools are “woefully understaffed when it comes to providing medical services,” he said.

The new hires will be in addition to the 11 nurses already on staff.

“There’s always been a need, it’s just getting the the point now where we can fit it in our budget,” Collier said.

The agreement will mean a savings of more than $100,000 for Bibb Schools, plus, “Navicent will get to expand its scope of services,” Collier said.

The board also voted to hire Chendra Dupree, currently the district’s intervention coach, as Central High School’s new assistant principal. Valeka Franklin, counselor at Howard Middle School, was hired as Southwest High School’s new dean of students.

This story was originally published July 20, 2017 at 7:35 PM with the headline "Public gets sneak peek at how new Bibb schools will look."