Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

District Hires Manager For Construction

A wedding, of sorts, was held at the regular meeting of the Prescott School Board Tuesday, March 21.

The board figuratively married Wade Abernathy, naming him construction manager of the Prescott High School gymnasium project.

Superintendent Ron Wright got the marital references started by saying the district would be in a kind of marriage with Abernathy by naming him construction manager, but needed to know as much about its prospective mate as possible before the wedding could take place.

Wright called other superintendents who have used Abernathy for gym projects, and all gave him glowing references.

The idea of a construction manager was brought up during the February meeting by David French and Rico Harris, the architects designing the gym. Abernathy was also on hand to give his views.

He told the panel it would be easier on the district to have a construction manager to take care of all the day-to-day details, hire the crews and set up an office trailer, instead of doing it themselves.

When the board toured other gyms looking to see what they wanted for PHS, they saw three Abernathy had worked on, including the ones at Jessieville and at Centerpoint.

Wright said Abernathy's gyms came highly recommended by those superintendents whose district has one.

Board member Jeff Haynes said the district first needs to know if it could get a divorce if the marriage doesn't work out, without losing half its assets.

Wright said a prenuptial agreement could be drawn up with an attorney before the district signs on the dotted line.

Haynes was also curious about who would be responsible if problems developed like those at the Alltell arena and was told Abernathy would be.

Board President Rick McGough said with a construction manager the district would only have one marriage, but would have more if it went another way to get the gym built.

Wright concluded talk of marriage by telling the board the construction manager method would be an American wedding with the district getting to choose its mate.

Otherwise, it would be an arranged marriage with someone else getting to pick who the district would wed.

The board agreed to accept Abernathy's marriage proposal, providing the district gets to approve of the subcontractors when the vows are said.

"We want as many local subcontractors as possible on the project," Wright said.

From there the rest of the meeting was reasonably normal.

Wright put forth two recommendations from the Personnel Policy Committee, one concerning substitute pay.

Certified substitute teachers will now get $50 per day while non certified subs will continued to be paid at $42 a day.

The other item was personal business days. The district has had one personal day, with all others requiring the teacher pick up the tab for their substitute.

Most districts in the area, though, allow at least two personal business days. The PPC recommended giving the teachers two days, with the option to pay the subs if they choose or need to be off more. The board agreed.

The board also approved a new salary schedule increasing the number of step pay increases from 15 to 28 and meeting the state's minimum teacher salary.

Teachers in the district were given the choice on voting for one of three salary schedules. One was just to meet the state minimum, the other was to go with the minimum and 28 steps, with the third being keeping the 15-year incremental raises and giving $2,000 to all teachers with bachelor's and master's degrees.

Wright said the district was in good enough financial shape to do any of the three, but teachers preferred to get more step increases, thereby stretching their pay hikes over a longer period of time, rather than taking the money now in one lump sum.

The 28 steps, Wright told the board, is the most expensive way for the district to go, but it's the one teacher's voted on.

The board agreed to make the new policy retroactive to the start of the school year and paying teachers the difference from then until April when the new schedule takes effect.

This, Wright said, will help make Prescott more competitive with other districts in the area where pay is concerned.

Wright said the problems at the McRae Middle School gym were worse than first thought.

Earlier this year a light fixture fell and struck a child after it was hit with a ball. A company was hired to correct this situation and found many of the lights were hanging by wires.

The lights were installed with cloth insulators and tar over the wiring, but have become brittle over the years.

Now, though, this has been corrected with new lighting being installed and new wiring put in.

Bobby Pilgreen had the bid on the lighting, Wright said, and did the job in less time than expected.

He said Pilgreen is absorbing some of the labor costs on doing the rewiring as well to help the district out.

When completed, the wiring and lighting will meet city and state electrical codes.

Hostetler Roofing had the low bid for two roofing projects in the district. One is for McRae Middle School with the other for the PHS student lounge.

The bid for the MMS gym was $17,789, while the other was $25,779.

The board also approved two travel requests, one for Phillip Holtoff to take the GT students to a Medieval theme park in Waxahachie, Texas.

Six students and five adults will be making the trip, where they will see how life was in the Middle Ages.

The other trip allows Wright to attend the Arkansas School Curriculum Development Commission conference in Virginia.

The ASCD, Wright said, will pick up the tab for the trip. He is the second vice president of the group and will be first vice president next year.