Cabell continues school construction

Lori Wolfe/The Herald-Dispatch

Culloden Elementary School students and staff are supplied with plenty of bottled water as they return to school on Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2014, in Culloden.

Mar. 30, 2014 @ 11:04 AM

HUNTINGTON -- More than $100 million in construction projects have been completed in the eight years since a $65.4 million bond was approved by Cabell County voters, and school officials are now working to complete at least three more major projects costing $18 million before 2016.

Now that bond-affiliated projects are completed, Cabell County Schools officials have started to check off items from their new to-do list, which is created largely from the county's Comprehensive Educational Facilities Plan, or CEFP.

In the plan is a renewed focus on the county's elementary schools, with the immediate emphasis falling on Culloden Elementary School and an "expeditionary learning" incubator school that will come from the consolidation of Peyton and Geneva Kent elementary schools.

The CEFP that guides the school system's project choices was adopted by the school board in 2010, and it serves as a road map for the next 10 years of operation.

It includes assessments and infrastructure needs of each Cabell County Schools facility, said Mike O'Dell, assistant superintendent of operations.

The opening of Huntington East Middle School in January ended the CEFP's emphasis on middle schools and instead turned it toward elementary schools, some of which are the oldest buildings in the county school system, O'Dell said.

"That's not to say we are going to neglect middle schools and high schools," O'Dell said. "It's not just for construction of new schools. It's also used to determine what work needs to be done on existing schools -- windows, roofs, air conditioning and heating -- things like that."

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Cabell continues school construction