PARIS — After 25 years as classrooms at Oxford Hills Middle School, seven portable units will soon be on the move to become hunting lodges and church space.
“It’s already starting to look different at the middle school,” Principal Troy Eastman said.
Beginning this fall, the school’s 500 or so students will rotate their time between leased space on Madison Avenue in Oxford and the middle school in Paris.
The Oxford Hills School District directors announced last week that the portables were sold by bids for a total of $12,746.
According to SAD 17 Business Manager Catherine Fanjoy-Coffey, Two D Enterprises of Paris was awarded five portables for $1,789 each. The Fayette Baptist Church was awarded one portable for $2,001 and Rick Reilly of Reilly Builders in Albany Township was awarded one portable for $1,800.
Until the end of the 2012-13 school year, Oxford Hills Middle School housed 200 of its approximately 550 students in the seven portables on either side of the main entrance. Each unit had two classrooms.
The middle school was built in the mid 1950s, with an addition built in the mid 1970s. The portables were intended to temporarily address overcrowding, Superintendent Rick Colpitts said.
A quarter-of-a-century later, they began to fail structurally and the student population grew. School officials looked for an out but with the middle school renovation project listed No. 28 on the state’s construction project list, school officials said it would be years before money is available for a new school.
School officials looked at options last year. Replacing the portables under a lease/purchase agreement would cost about $135,000 to $150,000 each, or about $1 million total. Renovating the portables would cost about $15,000 to $50,000 each, for a total of between $105,000 and $350,000 in local money.
Those ideas were discarded.
On June 6, Oxford Hills School District voters unanimously approved a $35.9 million budget that includes money for leasing and retrofitting the Madison Avenue building for classrooms. The portables, all agreed, should be removed.
Don Mason of Two D Enterprises in Paris, who bid on five units, said there is a lot involved in moving them.
“It’s not just a slam dunk,” he said.
For starters, the portables must be disassembled into two parts, electrical wires disconnected and the buildings moved at a cost between $5,000 and $8,000 each.
If the building is being moved down a street with low-hanging wires, that will cost an additional fee to move the service as the trailer passes under. Additionally, there are permit fees involved in addition to the required notice of a wide-load vehicle.
Once on site, there could be excavation costs, blocking of the foundation and probably some roof work will be needed, he said.
Three of the units he purchased were promised to friends who asked him to bid for them. The other two, he said, may end up as hunting lodges on some of Mason’s land.
ldixon@sunjournal.com
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- The portable classrooms in front of Oxford Hills Middle School on Pine Street in Paris have been sold and will be moved this summer. To make up for the loss of space, the district is leasing a building on Madison Avenue in Oxford.
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