Beaufort Co. schools’ $71M plans to rebuild campus delayed; public meeting Thursday
Beaufort County School District is “resetting” the timelines for projects in its $345 million 2019 school bond referendum — and the referendum’s largest project, the construction of a new campus for Robert Smalls International Academy and the demolition of the old campus, will be delayed by at least a year.
Under the revised schedule, all Robert Smalls projects will be “substantially completed” by December 2023, and fully completed in spring of 2024.
Students and staff will move into the new school building in August 2023, and the campus’ new athletic facilities will be ready to use in January 2024, according to the district’s chief operational officer, Robert Oetting.
The months between those deadlines and the district’s projected dates for substantial completion will be used to work on minor details in both projects, such as lighting and doorknobs, Oetting said.
The district is hosting a virtual community meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday for the public to discuss the Robert Smalls project.
Originally, the $71 million reconstruction of the kindergarten through eighth-grade school was slated to begin this past summer. Now, site work will begin in November and large-scale construction will begin in January 2022, district spokesperson Candace Bruder said Wednesday.
The new building, located at the site of the current school, was supposed to be completed in December 2022; students and staff would transition to the new building in January 2023 while construction crews demolished the old building.
The school is also getting new athletic facilities, which were originally slated for completion by August 2023 — that’s also when the district planned to have construction completed for all referendum projects.
Rob Corbin, the district’s referendum project manager, said at an Oct. 6 referendum monitoring committee meeting that the delays at Robert Smalls are due to a national shortage of steel, which in turn has caused building material costs to rise.
Similar shortages for building materials and labor have caused delays at other schools. The district is now aiming for “substantial completion” of all referendum projects by the end of 2023, Corbin said.
“At Robert Smalls, we ran into structural steel lead times, where the lead times we were hearing were in excess of six months,” Corbin said. “And because of that, we did have to modify the schedule at Robert Smalls.”
Members of the public can join the community meeting via Zoom, using the meeting ID 899 7287 3482 and the password 903772.
Robert Oetting, the district’s chief operations officer, said Thursday’s meeting will be a presentation with time for questions and comments.
“The focus will be on what will occur during the stages of construction, along with safety measures,” he said.
What was the 2019 school bond referendum?
The November 2019 referendum was the school district’s first successful referendum since 2008, following failed attempts to pass a bond issue in 2016 and 2018.
Once the referendum passed, the school district began the process of borrowing up to $344.6 million in 25-year bonds to begin paying for the projects, which will be spread out over the “next three to four years,” according to the district.
In South Carolina, school bond referenda are limited to funding capital projects, such as construction and land purchases. They cannot be used to increase staff pay. Salaries and benefits make up the majority of the district’s $254 million annual budget. The district is also bound by state law to use the money from bond referendas only for what’s listed on the ballot.
According to a tax calculator on the Beaufort County School District’s website, a primary resident with a home valued at $200,000 will pay an additional $56 in taxes annually.
Whether that amount would change over the 25-year life of the bonds depends on a number of factors, including future property tax reassessments, other bonds being retired and new industry moving into the county.
A secondary homeowner with a property of the same value will pay an additional $84 annually in taxes.
Rebuilding and demolishing Robert Smalls was the highest-ticket item of the 2019 referendum. Charleston-based LS3P Associates LTP was selected as the architect for the new building in May 2019; in October 2020, Kansas City-based JE Dunn Construction received a $53 million contract to carry out the rebuilding and demolition of the school.
This story was originally published October 20, 2021 at 3:33 PM.