Emotions run high at MJHS meeting

Published 10:58 am Thursday, February 12, 2009

By Melanie Patterson

The North Jefferson News



Schools are extremely important in north Jefferson County, as proven during a heated meeting Monday night at Mortimer Jordan High School.

The Jefferson County Board of Education is planning to build a new high school for Mortimer Jordan, moving it from its existing site of less than 20 acres in Morris to a sprawling 122 acres in Kimberly.

There was a community meeting at Mortimer Jordan Monday night during which architects, engineers and school board officials disseminated information about the new school.

Jim Hartsell of Davis Architects said the school, to be located on Bone Dry Road, is tentatively slated to open in 2011.

The new school will be 232,000 square feet. Hartsell said the existing school is about 130,000 square feet.

In addition to state-of-the-art classrooms and departments, the school will include a 1,600 seat competition gym, which will almost triple the seating for the school’s current gym; a 650-seat performing arts center; a 400-seat physical education gym; and a 650-seat auditorium.

Plans also call for a football stadium, practice football field, tennis courts, and fields for soccer, baseball and softball.

Jefferson County Schools Superintendent Dr. Phil Hammonds said there will be plenty of room to grow on the large campus. In addition, he took an opportunity at the meeting to squash some rumors about the new school.

First, he confirmed that the name of the school will remain the same. He also denied talk that the site is not suitable for construction regarding perc tests. “Let me assure you, this is not the case,” he said.

Two other issues brought up were concerns about athletic fields and what will happen to the existing school facility after the new school is built.

Hammonds said that athletic fields will not be included in the construction bid for the school, but will be bid out separately. However, grading for athletic fields is included in the original bid package.

Hammonds said athletic fields will be funded through several sources, including interest accruing on 1-cent tax funds and the Public School Fund Allocation that the school system receives yearly from the state. This fiscal year, the system received $4.7 million from the fund allocation.

Hammonds said a third source of revenue is a state bond issue that provided $20 million for the school system.

As for what to do with the existing school, Hammonds said he does not yet know. He urged local mayors and members of the community to contact the board of education with suggestions.

Mortimer Jordan principal Barbara Snider was pleased with the meeting.

“We’re all very thankful that Dr. Hammonds came out. The meeting answered a lot of questions and concerns that people in the community had,” Snider said. “I heard a lot of positive feedback from people in the community and from our faculty.”

However, not everyone is happy about the new high school.

There were those in the audience who said they did not want the school to move to another site. Others expressed concerns about traffic and confusion about whether funding was taken from Mortimer Jordan in order to pay for other new-school projects going over budget.

Hammonds assured the crowd that no funds were taken from the Mortimer Jordan High School project. The project is budgeted for $38 million.

As for traffic, Richard A. Nail II, with LBYD Civil and Structural Engineers, said that he has met with county road officials at least 10 times and has conducted traffic studies in the area.

Nail described how roads will be improved for the new school, but some in the audience did not seem convinced that there will not be traffic problems.

Mortimer Jordan is one of six Jefferson County high schools that will be re-built with 1-cent tax money collected in Jefferson County from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2005. Jefferson County Schools’ part of the revenue was $376 million.

To see the Davis Architects’ renderings of the high school, visit the North Jefferson News Web site at www.njeffersonnews.com and click on the link for this article.