An ambitious plan to upgrade infrastructure for Macon Middle and Franklin High schools failed to gain enough traction to proceed during the Macon County Board of Commissioners’ special called meeting Feb. 26.
Macon Middle School hasn’t been renovated since it was built in the 1970s, and it shows its age with defects like leaking roofs, rusted lockers and busted cafeteria tables. After a long list of false starts and complications brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, renovations are on track to begin this summer and offer students an updated school at the beginning of next year.
However, commissioner Josh Young, who was elected last year after the current plans were approved, wanted to do his own due diligence on the matter, and he wondered if there was more the board could be doing.
After speaking with school system officials, Young felt that renovating the middle school instead of rebuilding was an inefficient use of resources. He also pointed to another long-beleaguered school infrastructure project in Franklin High School’s athletic track as a reason that the middle school’s athletic facilities will require even further investment in coming years. In hopes of saving money down the road, he put forth a plan that would reshape the layout of Macon County Schools facilities and completely change the trajectory of the renovation plans.
“Are we putting a $10.5 million Band-Aid on our middle school?” Young asked. “Once we’re done, we’re going to have to turn right around and build an outdoor changing facility. We’re going to have a $13 million investment in this middle school – $13 million in a building built in 1974.”
Under Young’s proposal, the school system’s central office and Union Academy would both move to the current location of Franklin High, while the high school would move to the current Macon Middle School property, which would be augmented using land across the street that Phil Drake indicated a willingness to provide. The high school and middle school would then be able to share several athletic facilities to reduce costs. Young shared his idea with the Macon County Board of Education before the meeting, and officials were open to it.
“Mr. Young’s proposal addresses the issues we have at Macon Middle School, and it addresses the issues that we have at Franklin High School,” superintendent Chris Baldwin said. “This plan also addresses the known needs regarding the athletic facilities at Franklin High School.”
While the other commissioners were impressed by the initiative that Young showed in developing the idea, several of them felt that it resurfaced points that they had spent too much time in the past arguing over.
Future savings wouldn’t make changing course now any less expensive in the short term and it would likely require residents to vote to approve a tax increase to fund it. There are also doubts about the additional land that would be added to the upper grades complex, which suffers from similar drainage issues to the Franklin High track. Commissioner Ronnie Beale respected the idea, but he thought that the board had already done enough to ensure maximum quality for renovations.
“The work that we’ve put in, the experts that we’ve all talked to, the years that we spent trying to get the pricing down … to say that this board has been lax in supporting the schools and the new construction of whatever they need is just absolutely not fair,” Beale said.
Commissioner Gary Shields, a former Franklin High principal and football coach, has spent as much time examining these structural issues as anyone, but his concerns lie primarily with the here and now. Macon Middle School is falling apart to the point that it’s threatening the wellbeing of students and faculty, and delays have kept piling up in recent years. Shields said that even if there were better plans than the one that they have now, he couldn’t put things off any longer in good conscience.
“If Macon Middle School is a ‘health hazard,’ doing nothing is not making it healthier,” Shields said. “I feel the MMS renovation project could save a life or someone’s health, and one cannot put a monetary value on that.”
He also said he was open to building an entirely new middle school eventually, but that now isn’t the right time.
“That Band-Aid is not a permanent thing, but it can stabilize something until you get somewhere else,” Shields said.
Beale moved for the county to study adding an outdoor changing facility to the plans to renovate Macon Middle, but to otherwise proceed as planned.
The commissioners voted 3-2 to proceed with the original plan, with Young and commissioner Paul Higdon voting against.