Shelby County Schools will spend almost $14 million on a new elementary school for Chelsea students.

School board members awarded the bid for Chelsea Park Elementary to McCrory Construction, a firm the board has used in the past.

&uot;We’ve used McCrory before and been very pleased,&uot; Tom Ferguson, assistant superintendent of operations, said.

Superintendent Evan Major told board members the new school, which will serve to replace the existing Chelsea Elementary, will be ready for use in January 2007.

McCrory had the low base bid of $11.84 million for the school with additions, $965,000 for four classrooms in Wing A, $285,000 for four classrooms in Wing D, kitchen equipment for $545,000, media center furniture for $48,000, computer furniture for $28,500, landscaping for $75,000, precast concrete fascias for $108,000, a metal door system for $20,000 and paving, curbing and gutters in the front of the building for $70,500.

Some $621,000 of the total bid will come from other funds such as the Child Nutrition Program budget, the instruction budget and the technology budget.

Other companies bidding on the project include Argo Construction with a total bid of $14.18 million; Turner Construction with a total bid of $14.64 million; and Golden Construction with a total bid of $15.06 million.

These are the second bids the school system has requested for Chelsea Park Elementary. The first bids, opened earlier this year, came in beyond the expectations of board officials.

Assistant Superintendent of Finance Gary McCombs said these bids were much more in line with what they were expecting.

The school board also awarded bids for buses and a parallelogram platform lift.

Transportation South Inc. of Pelham received the bid for 35 72-passenger buses at a cost of some $54,668 each, or a total of some $1.91 million.

Southland International Bus Sales of Birmingham received the bid for two 53-passenger buses at a cost of some $63,893 each, or a total of some $127,786.

Auto Equipment Company of Johns Island, S.C., was awarded the bid for a heavy duty parallelogram platform lift for $72,936