[08/29/02]Vats of worms will take the place of students at the former Culkin school under a lease approved Wednesday by Vicksburg Warren School District trustees.

Kevin Ford and Rob McCain, owners of F and M Enterprises, got approval for a two-year lease of the empty complex for $1,000 a month.

“We plan to use the building to grow worms and sell them to breeders,” McCain said.

Customers won’t be fishermen. Instead, the worms will be sold for release in landfills to eat waste.

Superintendent Donald Oakes said the lease will include upkeep of the 60-year-old building and, in addition to the rent, the school district will get a break on utilities, which F and M will pay, and insurance. Premiums are far lower for occupied buildings. The lease also specifies the tenants must leave the building in the condition in which they found it.

Culkin was built as the school for a rural community of the same name in the early 1940s. It was a 12-year school, a high school and an elementary while in use.

It has been empty since the two new mega-elementary schools on Dana Road and Sherman Avenue opened in 1999.

School trustees have taken bids to sell Culkin, but rejected offers as too low. Halls Ferry, also closed in the 1999 consolidation, was sold earlier this year to Ergon Properties for $450,000 and is to be the site of a strip mall adjacent to a Home Depot-centered development on South Frontage Road.

Also emptied as elementaries were schools on Grove Street and at Bovina. Grove Street is a parent center and Bovina is home to the Center for Alternative Programs.

In other action, trustees:

Accepted recommendations for new hires.

Accepting increase in FBI fingerprinting processing fee. The processing increased from $24 to $27, effective Oct. 1.

Accepted nominations to issue Special Expert Citizen Educator Licenses.

Approved renewal of the MPAC program contract, an after-school tutoring program.

Approved a request from Tommy Jones Exterminating Company to withdraw his bid for the pest control services due to an error and to award the contract to Terminix, the lowest bidder, at $795 a month.