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BY NIC MILLER
STAR STAFF
nic.miller@elizabethton.com

The Elizabethton City School Board on Thursday approved plans to move ahead in the process of renovating several schools in the system.

Architect Thomas Weems was tasked with developing plans for renovations at Harold McCormick Elementary School, East Side Elementary School, and Elizabethton High School.

Renovations at Harold McCormick will include replacing windows, removing floor tiles, replacing lighting, and removing asbestos from the building.

“We have talked about this project at Harold McCormick for a long time, and all of the work that needs to be done there has been a long time coming,” said Superintendent Richard VanHuss.

East Side Elementary will gain an additional parking lot in the grassy area in front of the school.

With the addition of new teachers, parking has become scarce in the original parking lot and teachers are having to park at the church beside the school and walk a longer distance to reach the building. “The grassy area in front of the school is already being used for parking when it is dry, so it makes sense to add additional parking,” VanHuss said.

At Elizabethton High School, a series of smaller projects will include improving bathrooms and repaving the driveway behind the school.

“Thomas Weems will be handling the job of finding prices for each set of renovations, and that is when we will vote on which contract would work best for us for each set of renovations. For the East Side parking lot plan we are looking at around the $200,000 range while Harold McCormick would be a bigger job where we are looking at around $4 million,” VanHuss said.

VanHuss said the funding for these projects comes out of Esser 3.0 and Esser 2.0 funding the system received and had planned to use for renovations at T.A Dugger Junior High School.

“We had about $750,000 from Esser 2.0 funding that we were going to use for a smaller scale project at Harold McCormick, and with Esser 3.0 we had around $3.5 million that we were going to use for T.A. Dugger,” he said. “We decided the time was not right for renovations at the junior high, so what we are doing is combining those funds for asbestos removal at Harold McCormick.”

The board also discussed the school system’s Waverly Wishes project that raised over $2,000 for kindergarten teachers at Waverly High School and congratulated the Betsy Band, which finished first in all three competitions this year.

The next regularly scheduled Elizabethton City School Board meeting will take place at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 16 at the Elizabethton City Schools Central Office.