[06/18/01] The Vicksburg Warren School District is about to feel the first financial punch from last summer’s Title IX ruling on gender equity in sports.

Based on architects’ estimates of $80-$100 per square foot, the district has proposed more than $800,000 in its 2001-02 budget for the construction of two girls’ fieldhouses at Vicksburg High and Warren Central, as well as a softball pressbox at WC.

“That’s just the going rate on stuff like that,” Vicksburg Warren Superintendent Donald Oakes said of the amount. “That’s one of the dangers of being as old as I am, is you remember when stuff costs $10 to $15 a square foot. The rough estimate on this is $80 or better a square foot. I’m certainly not going to second-guess the architects. I hope that that’s high.”

The fieldhouses, which the district is being forced to build in accordance with the Title IX ruling by the Office of Civil Rights, were included on a list of capital improvements for the upcoming year. In the proposed budget, which will be voted on at the school board meeting on Thursday at Warren Central Junior High School, $386,967 is included for the VHS fieldhouse and $420,967 for the fieldhouse and pressbox at WC.

“I’m going to be honest with you, I was a little surprised at that. But I probably wasn’t anymore surprised at that than I was when I got our estimate for the roof at Vicksburg High and Vicksburg Junior High,” Oakes said, referring to another project on the list that garnered $769,582 in the proposed budget.

Michael Jones, the project manager for Johnson, Bailey, Henderson and McNeel, the architectural firm that designed the new facilities, said the cost has been level for nearly a decade.

In the last seven years we’ve done probably a billion dollars worth of school buildings in Mississippi, and those have ranged from $75 to $100 a square foot,” said Jones, who also did some work on City Pool and the Central Fire Station. “That’s how much buildings cost. That’s $85 a square foot. That’s pretty reasonable.”

The cost of the fieldhouses is also more because the work is being contracted out instead of done with volunteer labor and donated materials, like the last two similar projects at the schools.

A baseball fieldhouse at VHS was completed this spring and a baseball pressbox at WC was completed early in 2000. The school district contributed $15,000 to help launch each project, but that amount was mainly spent on site preparation. The rest of the money came from fund-raisers and loans taken out by parents. Most, if not all, of the labor was done by parents and students, making a final cost nearly impossible to determine.

“Labor is a big part of any project, and when you do volunteer work it’s going to be a lot less than if it’s contracted out,” said Joey Henderson, a partner with Johnson, Bailey, Henderson and McNeel, the architectural firm that came up with the estimate for the school district. “We’re obviously going to do everything we can to keep the bid cost down, and the bid market is good … One reason we’re trying to hurry this up is to avoid the pricing influences from the Nissan plant in Madison, once that’s started.”

For the new fieldhouses, the district is being forced to foot the entire bill in accordance with the Title IX ruling.

“Title IX has told us to go out and build it,” Vicksburg Warren athletics director Lum Wright Jr. said. “That’s where we got into some trouble before, was with some of these teams going out and doing things on their own through the booster clubs.”

Oakes said he appreciated the volunteer work done on the recent projects, but the OCR has decreed that the school district must pay for the girls’ facilities.

“We don’t have a choice. We’ve got to build these fieldhouses and we’ve got to get them done, so we can’t allow volunteers to do it,” Oakes said. “But we certainly appreciate what the baseball clubs did, don’t get me wrong.”

Wright also pointed out that the large cost of the fieldhouses is due, in part, to their larger size each one will be nearly 4,000 square feet and contain locker rooms, storage and offices for three sports instead of just one. The football fieldhouses at VHS and WC are each about 6,000 square feet.

Of the four girls sports that will inhabit the new fieldhouses slow- and fast-pitch softball, soccer and track only one will be playing in the fall and winter, and two in spring. Each fieldhouse will contain three locker rooms, however, and the only common areas in the plans are a weight room, training area and showers.

Wright said the extra locker space for each team was necessary because of the Title IX ruling, as well as the need for teams to train in the offseason.

“We’re having offseason programs now where everybody wants to lift, too,” Wright said, adding that all of the plans for the fieldhouses had to be approved by the OCR.

A late revision to the plans for the VHS fieldhouse was needed so that it would fit in the corner of Memorial Stadium opposite the football fieldhouse. Without the change, another $20,000 would have to be spent to remove a light pole, Oakes said.

Even with the late shuffle, Oakes said the district should begin accepting bids in July and he hopes to have the fieldhouses open by the end of the year.

“If everything goes right, we would hope we can get into these things by the end of 2001,” he said.

Jones, however, said that once bids are accepted it would probably take about six months to build the structures and that early next year was a more likely date.

Also included in the proposed budget were funds to resurface the track at Warren Central Junior High and replace floor boards in the visitors’ bleachers at Warren Central High School.

Oakes said both projects will go forward only if enough money is left over. The track resurfacing will cost $35,000, and the new floor boards $24,000, although Oakes said the district may consider replacing the wooden boards with longer-lasting aluminum ones if the price is right.