The Vicksburg Warren School District has completed the first step in making drastic changes to its current school facilities by having a detailed study done of where they currently stand.

Now comes the hard part of deciding exactly what they want to do.

At a special called meeting Wednesday, Gary Bailey with Dale/Bailey Architects presented the finding of his team’s months long study of the facilities throughout VWSD and offered four options on how to rectify them.

The major issues discovered during the study included what Bailey called “substantial overcrowding” at Vicksburg and Warren Central high schools and Warren Central Junior High. There are also issues with many of the schools’ roofs, electrical systems, toilets and the overall layout of the schools.

Despite those issues Bailey said, “Every one of them (the schools) are structurally stable. There is not a one that I would say we need to be concerned about.”

After outlining the problems, Bailey offered four options ranging in price from $124 million to $142 million with all but one including building at least one new school.

Of the four options, Bailey recommended the board choose between the two that fell in the middle pricewise at $131.5 million and $132 million.

The overall most expensive option, which he didn’t recommend, was the only one to include merging the two high schools and building one new combined high school in a new location. His reasoning for not recommending this option was simple.

“I will tell you up front it will be hard for you to afford,” Bailey said. “In all the funding scenarios we have looked at, I don’t think you can get there from here. I am afraid it is one I’m going to tell you you can’t afford.”

The cheapest of the options at $124 million, would have involved remodeling the two existing junior highs and moving the high schools there and moving the junior highs to the existing high schools. A shared career academy complex would then be built between the two high schools. Bailey said the issues with this one are related to the location of the site and the challenges it would cause.

“There are all kinds of challenges with doing that and they are mainly site driven — traffic circulation, bus circulation, parking,” Bailey said. “It can be done it is just a radical thing. You have to think like a city not a town.”

Bailey’s two recommended options cost roughly the same amount with only a $500,000 difference, but they offer drastically different ways of going forward. Both options call for renovations and expansions at elementary schools, but from there they diverge.

The $131.5 million option keeps the majority of schools where they are and calls from massive renovations and expansions of the two high schools.

“Your capacity for vision is limited because of space,” Bailey said. “The high schools are substantially short on classrooms. I am talking 12 to 18 classrooms at each of the high schools … your programs are driving growth, but your buildings aren’t responding to it.”

That plan also offers the option of remodeling the existing sports complexes at the two schools or building one new shared facility. To address another main issue the study identified, which is the inability for the Academy of Innovation and Bowmar Elementary to serve all the students who are interested in their programs, this option calls for building a new AOI between WCJH and Vicksburg Junior and expanding Bowmar into the current AOI building on Grove Street.

“Option 1 is built upon taking what you have and making it great,” Bailey said. “It is taking Warren Central, it is taking Vicksburg High School, and we’ve been through them at length, and I promise there are solutions to make them wonderful … It doesn’t happen easily because those building are old. They’ve got good backbones to them, but they need a lot of help.”

The second recommended option, priced at $132 million, would call for a massive renovation and expansion of Warren Central and the building of a brand new Vicksburg High on land adjacent to Warren Central. The two schools would then share a career academy facility and brand new athletic facilities.

“In that theory, you would have Warren Central as its own high school, standalone just like it is now with substantial additions to it and a brand new Vicksburg High School somewhat adjacent to it,” Bailey said. “They share your career academy complex. There is land to do it.”

Vicksburg Junior would then move into the existing VHS and AOI and the central office would move into the current VJHS, allowing for the Bowmar expansion into Grove Street.

After presenting the four options, Bailey asked that the board be ready by its December meeting to decide on if they want to move forward and if so, with which option.

Board member Jim Stirgus Jr. said his plan over the next few weeks is to go through all the details of each option before voicing his opinion of which way he would prefer to go.

“My personal opinion, I think it would be a great advantage to our kids to have something to look forward to,” Stirgus said. “I think it helps not only the perception, but I think it would help the kids as far as classes are concerned and we would have something that no other school in the state would be able to match.”

Sally Bullard said she has an option that she prefers, but “I am not willing to say what it is. As a board, we are going to make a decision.” She did add that, “I think it is very exciting that we are open to moving the district forward.”

Board president Bryan Pratt said he saw both of the options that were recommended as viable.

“Being able to maintain both high schools on one campus and allowing the academies to be between those is a very exciting option,” Pratt said. “It is a change though and we have to make sure the community is ready for that change. The other option, basically allowing everyone to stay where they are and doing some major renovations, are still very viable options. The challenge then is the district doesn’t get to enjoy some of the synergy we would if they were on one campus.”

No matter what way they decide to go, Pratt said “this will be the crown jewel to incorporate what we are doing in the classrooms and create a showpiece for the Vicksburg Warren School District.”

Superintendent Chad Shealy said the proposed changes would be “life changing” for those in the district and their ability to prepare students for life after high school.

“I think it is wonderful,” Shealy said. “I think Gary did a great job of taking a lot of voices and putting together some viable proposals for us. It excites me as a superintendent to think about our students having some world-class facilities.”

He added that he believes the students are worth the price tag it would take to make the new facilities a reality.

The proposed price tag of more than $130 million would be paid for through a bond issue of approximately $83 million and then a $50 million loan taken out by the district.

District finance director Shaquita Burke said the district has $3 million of debt service in its current budget tied to the construction of Dana Road and Sherman Avenue elementary Schools. Those payments will roll off the books by the end of 2018 allowing the district to take out the new loan without making changes to the budget. 

If the board approves one of the options in December, Bailey suggested having a vote on the bond issue in March, which would require approval by 60 percent of Warren County voters.

Most of 2018 would then be spent outlining architectural plans with the first major bids going out in the fall of 2018. The estimated timeline for the project to be finished is the beginning of the 2021 school year, although some projects would be completed before then.

“You have to build buildings before you can renovate buildings,” Bailey said. “That is a complex two and a half year process.”