Junction City School District proceeds with building project

News-Times
News-Times

JUNCTION CITY — The Junction City School Board approved a motion to proceed with the high school extracurricular building project at its meeting last week.

ERC architect Michael Rogers said Tuesday that the project will cost up to $1.7 million. The district has been approved for state partnership funding of 35 percent of the cost of the 9,000 square-foot building.

Rogers brought a set of “design development” drawings that he provided for contractors, including those that ERC has worked with before. Documents provided to the board showed the project’s proposed cost broken up into several bid packages, the architect said.

“We’re already preparing for bid day as you can see … As far as construction management, just the additional fees that we would have as far as on-site supervision, facilities here on-site, different permits, testing laboratories, things like that we would have incurred throughout this project as well,” Rogers said. “You’ll have a total of $1.5 million, then you have a bond. That is a percentage of the project of each one of these bids.”

The “bonds” work similar to an insurance policy that holds a subcontractor liable for any delays or “faulty work” and ensures that a company finishes a job. Because the project would be funded by public funds, any bid over $20,000 has to be bonded.

“We would call their bonding agent and then the bonding agent would see that the rest of work is fulfilled, most of the time by another contractor,” he said.

The next step is submitting the drawings to the Department of Education, he said. Board members unanimously approved this step, moving forward with the project.

District superintendent Robby Lowe said the first phase of the gym parking lot project is “finished and striped.” About 140 paved parking spots are available near the gym.

The Junction City School District is also the latest to get a website and mobile app designed by Apptegy, a Little Rock-based company that provides sites for schools in Arkansas and across the country. El Dorado, Parkers Chapel, Smackover-Norphlet’s sites went live right before the school year started.

“The web design we have now is based off a 1998 technology. Ms. (Melissa) Pumphrey has to spend hours if she changes any little thing … As technology moves this way and the technology from 1998 is stagnant, we can’t do everything we need to do with the standards that we need to meet,” Lowe said.

In other business, high school football players are facilitating Men of Character club meetings for elementary school students grades 4-6, principal Teresa Matochik said.

“They’re really excited about what they have. They have a curriculum … The creed is written, but they’re going to work on teaching the elementary students the creed. Defining and acting out the words respect and honesty is what they’re doing this month,” high school principal Joy Mason said.

Board vice president David Barnette was appointed as the legislative liaison and president Jay Green as the voting delegate to the annual Arkansas State Boards Association Conference.

The school board also approved a special budget meeting, an annual financial training workshop, the district’s child nutrition procurement plan, assurances for federal programs, minority teacher and administrator recruitment plan and a student expulsion.

The district’s Annual Report to the Public will be held at 5:40 p.m. prior to the Junction City School Board’s next meeting in the special programs meeting room.

Brittany Williams may be reached at 870-862-6611 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter and like her on Facebook @BWilliamsEDNT for updates on Union County school news.

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