OWINGSVILLE, Ky. (LEX 18) — It's a new school year for students in Bath County. But for its middle schoolers, their new year starts in a very old building. Bath County Middle School was built in 1939, and superintendent Steven Evans showed LEX 18, which is years overdue for a major upgrade.
Evans says, "We've got kids cramped in smaller spaces, we've got the same thing I talked about earlier the walls, we have technology issues, we've got millions of dollars worth of computers and a lot of times they don't work because the WIFI's not working. The overall experience here, students are in the gym right now, there's not enough room in the gym it's undersized, again it was built in 1939. And so, we have great students, we have a great community, we have a great faculty but they're working in a substandard building."
Those are just a few of the issues he says this school is having. Others include needing a new plumbing and pipe system. Evans says, "The facility set so heavy on it, that it's crushed the pipes over time. So, we had a major clog here that we had to dig up."
He says this building needs new HVAC systems, structural repairs, foundational repairs, and more. In the gym, Evans says, "Particles fall to the floor, so they put a faux ceiling up here to help cover that up."
The district is asking for this community's help. Unlike neighboring school districts, Owingsville doesn't have as much of a franchise tax to help create revenue. "We're only getting a couple of hundred thousand dollars in revenue from the franchise tax where they're getting millions,” explains Evans.
He explains that a Nickel Tax, which this community can vote on this fall, would only ask residents for $39 more dollars for every 100,000 of assessed real property value. He says renovating this building could cost between $15 and $25 million, and a rebuild could cost between $35 and $45 million. He says the tax could also help the schools bonding.
Evans says, "We have an operating budget of $5 million. We would have to shut this district down, have no school, turn off all the lights for ten years just to get the amount of money to build a new middle school."
There are more than 400 students at the school who Evans says would be difficult to relocate if the building got shut down. He wants people to think of this as an investment in the district's and community's future, including other district projects.
He says, "Passing the nickel will build us a new middle school but it will also over time fix every other problem that we have. We'll build a new bus garage; we'll get the awnings and do all that."
