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By EMILY SPARACINO | Staff Writer

ALABASTER – The Shelby County Board of Education made decisions regarding construction projects at schools in Chelsea, Montevallo and Helena at a meeting at the Shelby County Instructional Services Center on Thursday, Nov. 4.

The board approved a change order for a project related to water damage repairs and refinishing the Chelsea Middle School gym floor and the Montevallo Middle School gym floor.

Assistant Superintendent of Operations David Calhoun said the purpose of the change order was to separate the projects.

“The two projects together were going to be $46,000,” he said. “Since then, the Montevallo job will be a little more extensive in scope.”

Calhoun said a 4-inch water line along the exterior wall at MMS burst, causing hundreds of thousands of gallons of water to leak out over the span of a weekend, compromising part of the school’s foundation.

The change order calls for the original contract sum to decrease by $18,525, bringing the sum down from $46,279 to $27,754.

Calhoun said he would come back to the board in the near future with a small construction project at MMS.

“We’re not ignoring Montevallo; we just know that it’s going to cost more than what we originally planned,” Calhoun said. “We are just separating the projects today. We will pay for just Chelsea Middle School on this small construction project.”

In other business, the board also approved a bid for classroom additions to Helena Middle School.

Calhoun said the project is the first of several capital projects done sequentially in the coming months.

“This is the $42 million that we have to address growth needs all across our system,” he said. “Certainly Helena is a growth area, as well as several other communities.”

According to Calhoun, district leaders were aiming to build at least 16 classrooms.

“We were hopeful that we could get 16 classrooms with our budget, but on the off chance that we would get lucky, we also had an Alternate 1, which included four more classrooms, and Alternate 2, which included some additional concrete paving around the campus,” he said. “Based on the lowest bid, we will be able to build 20 classrooms instead of 16. We will actually have some room to grow into.”

Of the six bids, the board approved the lowest bid of $6,029,331 (including the base bid and alternates) from Williford Orman Construction.

With architecture fees, the total project cost will be about $6.6 million.