Construction plans move forward on new $17M School of Discovery

Construction of the first new school built by Selma City Schools in a decade should begin in the next few weeks as crews get started building a new $17 million School of Discovery on Washington Street.

The 100-year-old original classroom building was demolished over the summer and the school board should pick a contractor at their next meeting, which puts construction starting as soon as November or December, Selma Superintendent Dr. Zickeyous Byrd told the Selma Sun.

The new school will be a fine arts magnet school called the School of Discovery Preparatory Academy that will serve students in grades sixth through eighth starting in the 2024-2025 school year, Byrd said. The renovation is part of Byrd’s transformation plan he presented to the Selma School Board in the spring.

“Our mission is to rethink, redesign and reimagine Selma City Schools, and this is a huge part of that,” Byrd said. “We want to make sure we offer students everything we can offer them. This city is rich in history and in the arts, and we feel this is the perfect opportunity to expand into the arts.”

The new School of Discovery will have a larger footprint than before and will accommodate 300-400 middle school students who want to attend for the fine arts. The other students in six through eighth grades will attend RB Hudson.

Most of the funding for the new SOD is coming from one-time COVID relief allocations called Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds, Byrd said.

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Selma City Schools has received three rounds of the COVID relief funds based on enrollment and will be using half of the third round of $22 million for School of Discovery construction, Byrd said. The rest will come from a bond that was issued last year for capital improvement projects.

The emergency funds have to be used by September 2024, Byrd said. Most of the funding has been used toward preventing outbreaks like COVID with new HVAC units at each school, touchless water fountains, replaced windows and carpet, Byrd said.

The funding also covered adding more teachers to reduce class sizes and interventionists to help students who fell behind after years of virtual learning, Byrd said.

The old School of Discovery building was showing its age and closed in 2022 due to mold. Sixth graders instead attended class at the former Knox Elementary School, but that building was damaged by the Jan. 12 tornado, so the students were moved to an unused wing of RB Hudson Middle School, where they finished the 2023 school year. Sixth graders this school year were divided out into the elementary schools.

Byrd said it was challenging to find a contractor to build the new school considering most local builders are booked up with tornado reconstruction projects. Selma City Schools is having to hire outside contractors instead, which Byrd said is driving the cost up. Selma also found itself in bidding wars with larger school districts using the same relief money to build larger projects than Selma’s $17 million school that contractors would rather bid on.

“This is biggest project we’ve done in years,” Byrd said. “And I’m not sure we will see money like this (federal COVID dollars) again. These are one-time use funds and once it’s over, it’s over.”