TIFTON — Tift County Schools’ Maintenance and Operations Department are closing in on a finalized blueprint for their new middle school, but needed a few things ironed out with the Board of Education first.

At the Oct. 10 Board of Education meeting, Allen Martin, director of maintenance and operations, reported that the blueprints for the new middle school planned to be built on U.S. 319, were nearing finalization. However, they requested the board pass a pair of resolutions to ensure that things continued to run smoothly.

Martin explained that the current design for the new middle school did not match with the school system’s five year facility plan, and requested that the board alter this five year plan to better suit what they intended to do with the new institution.

He also requested that the board assist them in asking for a waiver from the state government to accommodate for an alteration to their blueprints for the middle school.

The director reported that the initial plan for the school had set aside twenty-one rooms for science labs, but had eventually determined they would need three less than they anticipated. Due to applying for $15 million in advance to fund the project, they would now need to provide a reason as to why they needed the plan changed, which the waiver would accommodate for.

Martin said that he had spoken with Mike Sanders, facilities director for the Georgia Department of Education, about the shift in rooms, and was informed there would be no issue with using the waiver, so long as the board approved of it.

Both items were approved unanimously by the board.

Martin also provided the board members with an overview of the plans for the middle school. He asserted they were building the school to last, estimating a life span of at least fifty years, and noted it would be constructed with future expansion in mind.

He also explained that they intended on setting up the school to keep the sixth graders separated from the higher grades as much as possible, providing them with their own gym and media center apart from the facilities used by the seventh and eighth graders.

The wings of the school would be arranged into groups of subjects to keep students in one section of the school for all of their classes and reduce foot traffic.

Sports fields for tennis, baseball, and softball, as well as a football stadium, were planned to be included, as were chorus and band rooms as large as the rooms at Eighth Street Middle School. Two multipurpose fields would also be stationed at the rear of the school for use by any of the extracurricular programs, and CTAE labs were planned to be spread throughout the building.

Aware of the popularity of agricultural programs at other TCS middle schools, Martin stated that these labs would all be made the state minimum size for an agricultural lab, in the event that they needed to repurpose any of them into more ag labs.

He reported that once the blueprints were finalized, they would be opened to contractors for a thirty-day bid period. After that period had closed, the guaranteed maximum price would be determined, and the board would have the opportunity to adjust the plan to trim down on costs before moving to the next step.