Malia Riggs
Elmore Autauga News
Top Photo: An example of plans for the Billingsley Teaching Lab.
The Autauga County Board of Education, ACBOE, approved the annexation of Prattville High School, the Autauga County Technology Center, (ACTC), and any property adjacent and owned by the ACBOE into the city limits of Prattville.
Superintendent Lyman Woodfin stated that the annexation will go on to help with fire and police agreements while also providing greater opportunities to work with the City of Prattville, much like the Pine Level Elementary annexing into the Pine Level town limits last February.
Currently, the way that the fire and police agreements operate with PHS and ACTC, a memorandum of understanding has to be used, Woodfin confirmed. However, Woodfin stated that it could be a lot easier if the two respective schools were in the Prattville city limits.
“This also gives us flexibility with the city of Prattville in terms of all the schools would be in the city. Not to say the same thing twice, but this is exactly what we did with Pine Level Elementary School a few months ago,” Woodfin said.
The Board also approved the sitework to start for the Billingsley School applied science livestock teaching lab. A bid on that project is set for $62,226.
Woodfin confirmed that this project is being funded by one time state grants provided by the State Department, and not coming out of local dollars.
The Board also approved the bid for gym floors to be refinished across the district. The bid from Scout Sport Floors LLC, would be to sand, refinish and paint the gym floors at the old Prattville Kindergarten School, Autaugaville School, Billingsley School, Marbury Middle School, Marbury High School, Prattville Junior High School and Prattville High School.
The amount of the bid is set at $142,750, and the refinishing of gym floors is recommended every 10 years, Woodfin confirmed.
“You’re supposed to take the gym floors down to the original wood. We have numerous schools where, honestly, I don’t know if anybody can tell you the last time this occurred. So, we want to do this to put everybody on the same timeline for maintenance purposes. Doing all the floors at one time obviously makes it easier to track and as you know gyms are used for everything under the sun in schools but all public events. So, it will drastically change the looks of our schools as well,” Woodfin said.
Woodfin confirmed that this project is being funded with ATF funds provided by the Alabama State Department of Education, and also not being funded with local funds. Woodfin said that these are one time state allocated funds that are specifically earmarked for projects such as these.
“This is another example of us trying to solve facility issues while we have the money that we have, that we don’t know if we’re going to get every year from the state,” Woodfin said.
