County school officials last week OK’d a plan that completes lighting improvements at all high school softball fields and discussed similar needs at baseball and football fields.
The Board of Education voted 6-0 on Aug. 5 to spend about $165,000 to install new LED lighting at softball fields at Farmville Central and South Central High schools. Chairwoman Amy Cole did not attend the meeting.
Executive Director of Operations Aaron Errickson told the board that the two lighting projects would give all Pitt County Schools’ traditional high schools LED lighting for softball. Ayden-Grifton, North Pitt, D.H. Conley and J.H. Rose high schools all received replacement lighting this spring at a total cost about about $320,000. Tommy Lawrence Electrical Contractors is making all the lighting replacements for the school district.
“The four we approved in the spring are already installed and (received) lots of compliments from the coaches,” Errickson said. “They’ve very happy with them; they make a big difference on the field.”
He said the new lighting, which is being paid for with money from the school district’s energy savings fund, has substantially lowered the utility bills for the four softball fields.
District 4 representative Don Rhodes asked when high school baseball fields could expect to receive LED replacement lighting. He said he has received some complaints about dull lights on the fields.
Errickson said the most likely field to get LED lighting next is Rose’s football field.
“Rose football poles are the oldest in the district that are not concrete. They’re still wood,” he said.
“We prioritized softball mostly because they were the shortest light poles. That’s a big factor of the costs.”
Errickson said that LED lighting replacement is planned at all the high school fields as energy savings funds are available. The lights that are currently used are not being made any more, he said, so old lights that are removed will be kept as replacement bulbs until upgrades can be made.
The operations expense was one of three the school board voted to approve at the Aug. 5 meeting, its first since June. A $120,000 expenditure will be used to replace a chiller at Northwest Elementary School that Errickson said was no longer functioning and was beyond repair.
“About two and a half weeks ago, we had a power outage at Northwest Elementary and I’m not sure if the power outage caused the damage to the chiller or the chiller having the failure caused the power outage at the school,” he said.
Because it is expected to take as long as six months for the new chiller to arrive, PCS will have the added expense of renting a chiller unit for three months to cool Northwest during the late summer and early fall. Errickson said that after October, the school’s one functional chiller should be able to handle the load until new unit arrives.
In other business, the board approved a software licensing agreement with Ekos to provide a replacement fuel management system for transportation. The cost of the upgrade is $98,967, but due to financing assistance from fuel provider Go Energies, the cost to the district should be $58,842.
The board also approved a contract with Thompson Gas LLC to provide auto fueling services for the eight propane school buses in the PCS fleet. There is no cost for the contract.
Also Monday, the board:
Recognized the following North Carolina Governor’s School participants. Aria Mills of D.H. Conley High School; Stone Billings of J.H. Rose High School; AbdalRahman Musallam and Charlotte Panicoe of Innovation Early College High School; and Morgan Harvey, Rashad May and Madison Owens of PCS Early College High School.
The board honored N.C. Scholastic Media Association Award winners from J.H. Rose High School. The school newspaper, Rampant Lines, received a second place award for its news section and a first place award for online advertising. Individual award winners were: Elliott Flinchbaugh, first place, sports article; Owen Simmons, second place, sports photograph; Seth Bright, second place, sports columns; and Smithwick Vick, third place, sports columns. The newspaper was recognized with eight honorable mentions in the competition. The school board recognized newspaper adviser Ashley Hutchinson; editors in chief Ginny Blount, Sarah Ingalls and Anna MacLean Evans; and new editors Allen Hutchinson, Maddie Lanier and Maya Swaggerty.
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