The first step in a major $1 million improvement project at restrooms throughout the Lamar County School District is set to begin in the near future, as the district’s board of trustees recently accepted a bid of $963,000 from Sons Construction LLC to begin that process at Oak Grove Middle School.
That decision was made at the board’s November 13 regular meeting, where school district superintendent Steven Hampton said the work will begin at that campus – which is located at 2543 Old Highway 24 in Hattiesburg – as soon as possible.
“We have put out for bid multiple other bathroom (improvement projects) at multiple other campuses,” Hampton said. “We just began with Oak Grove Middle School because it was in the worst condition, so we wanted to start at that location first.
“That bid process went smoothly, so we went ahead and went out for the other locations. So we’re putting that out for bid now.”
During the district’s September 14 meeting, board members approved the slate of projects, which will entail improvements to the restrooms throughout the district’s 17 campuses. Officials chose to start with the facilities at Oak Grove Middle School and Oak Grove Elementary School, which Hampton said are the oldest and the most in need of repair, before continuing work at the other campuses.
“(Our restrooms) are older, and it’s just normal wear and tear,” Hampton said in a previous story. “A lot of the dividers are the main problem, but we’re actually going in and looking at flooring, walls, putting in new vanities, new lavatories.
“We’ll have new toilets, new urinals – we’re really outfitting them to get them nicer for our students.”
The project is helped by a $750,000, zero-percent interest loan from the Mississippi Department of Education, which was approved at the latest session of the Mississippi Legislature. That loan will be paid off over the course of the next 10 years, and the school district will fund the remaining cost of the project from its budget.
“(That loan) won’t even cover half the cost,” Hampton said. “We’re still bidding out the whole project, but that will definitely help us get started on the project.
“We’re going to combine that with district funds, and I can’t give you an exact dollar amount on that because we haven’t had in bid out. I know it’s going to be in excess of a million dollars, and so until we get our bids back, we won’t know (the cost) exactly. But we have $750,000 to get us started, and we’ll be combining that with district funds to get the bathrooms renovated.”
Work will be completed in phases to avoid shutting all the restrooms in one building down at the same time.
“It’ll be an ongoing project to get those restrooms,” Hampton said. “We can’t do all bathrooms at the same time on one campus, so we’ll have to do one bathroom at a time at Oak Grove Middle School, so that we can still operate and have classes and those things.
“We can’t shut down all facilities at one time, so we’ll have to rotate through them.”
