Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

State approves partial funds for classrooms and auditorium

Partial funding for two major Gurdon School District construction projects has been approved by the state of Arkansas.

The first project involves building four new classrooms for the elementary school and the second involves building an auditorium for the high school.

Bobby Smithson, superintendent of Gurdon schools, said July 13 that the state will pay 43 percent of the $650,000 needed to build four new classrooms at the Gurdon Primary School. That means Arkansas funding will pay $279,500 of the construction cost for four classrooms to be added to the existing kindergarten building.

The school system will be responsible for the remaining $370,500.

The money source for the districts portion will be voted on by school board members Thursday, July 20.

Smithson said, "We finished the school year better than I thought we would. Our school system has a $700,000 end of the year balance. I will recommend to the board we take $200,000 from the ending balance to help finance our part of the classroom construction."

Smithson said a portion of the $700,000 balance came from $106,000 of state money which Gurdon schools received unexpectedly after the last legislative session.

"We gave our teachers $40,000 in salary increases from the $106,000," Smithson said. "The rest of it went in the contingency fund which helped to boost us up to the $700,000 ending balance."

If school board members agree to use $200,000 from the ending balance money for the classroom construction project, Smithson plans to recommend they vote to finance the remaining $170,500 with second lien bonds.

"This way there will be no tax increase," he said.

Smithson said construction bids for the four classrooms will be taken on Sept. 1. He said building them should take between eight and 10 months, with a goal of having all four classrooms in operation for GPS by the fall of 2007.

Upon completion of the project, Smithson said use of three portable buildings will be discontinued. The new classrooms will be at least 800 square feet in size, he said. One will be larger, as it will be designed for use as an art room.

Auditorium

As to the second project, Smithson said the new high school auditorium has a total cost estimate of $2 million. The state has agreed to pay 43 percent, which amounts to $860,000. This leaves the school district responsible for paying the remaining $1,140,000.

Smithson said, "The timetable on this project is uncertain. The Cabes have been saving in a special fund to build an auditorium for sometime.

"It is my understanding they have more than $600,000 in that fund."

Smithson said the project is just over $500,000 short of being funded, "and Anita Cabe is doing everything she can to come up with the rest of the money needed to start building our new auditorium."