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VALLEY — Chambers County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Sharon Weldon was Wednesday’s noon hour speaker at the Kiwanis Club of Valley and gave members of the club an update on what’s been going on with school consolidation.

She told them that she and other local school officials had recently met with Federal Judge Keith Watkins to discuss this.

“He wanted to know where things stood with our system,” she said. “I told him we were ready to get back in gear and get it going. I think he’s ready for us to be done with it.  When we left that meeting we knew what out task was – to move forward.”

Part of moving forward is to have different service providers. One of them is a familiar name for this area: Birmingham-based Joe Jolly & Company. The Chambers County system has an agreement for them to do underwriting services.

Dr. Weldon said it’s clear due to cost constraints that some changes have to be made from the original plan for the new high school.

What has been decided is that a new one will be built, that it will be going up on a site in Valley and will accommodate an estimated 1,000 students. It will not be in the $90 million-plus range though.

Weldon, school board members and some central office staff personnel recently met with the project architect to talk about where to go from here.

“We told them that it was a great design but that not everything was a must have,” Dr. Weldon said. School officials still want to have a main gym and an auxiliary gym and that strong consideration is being given to relocate Inspire Academy to the new Valley campus.

A major factor in this is to reduce school bus traffic on Highway 50 between Valley and LaFayette. “We don’t want to drive kids back to career tech after we’d already driven them a long way to get here,” she said.

Reducing construction cost will come down to reducing the total square footage of the building. The new high school is a top priority but not the only one.

In the coming years, improvements need to be made in the LaFayette High building, portions of which have been there for nearly a century. Plans are to convert the building into a K-8 Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEAM) Academy. There will be some changes made at the elementary level as well, with schools being located in Fairfax, Huguley and Eastside in LaFayette.

“I will be meeting with the board to make sure we are in agreement and heading in the right direction,” Dr. Weldon said.

The original date for the school to open has been shifted back a year, from 2027-28 to 2028-29.

There are some unknowns to be considered as well. A national recession could slow things down.

Taking on the task of school consolidation is a daunting one. “When I was growing up on the banks of the Chattahoochee in Langdale, I never expected to be involved in a project that had the name million in it,” Weldon said. “I think of my daddy (the late Billy Sides) and what he taught me a lot.”

Weldon commended Valley Mayor Leonard Riley and the city council for all the support they have given the project. A football practice field for Point University has already gone up near the site, and the city has pledged its cooperation in having access routes to the school site when construction gets under way.

“The city has been great with this,” Weldon said. “Our state legislators have been very supportive as well, and we really appreciate that.”

Weldon has a number one goal is being a superintendent: “We want to be self-sustaining in everything we do,” she said.

The Covid shutdown of 2020-21 had a massive impact on the nation, state and local area and still lingers.

“Schools were closed all across the nation,” Weldon said. “Everyone lost at least one-fourth of that school year. We had to switch to virtual education. This was not good for students who lived in remote locations that did not have internet access.”

There’s no way to measure what these students missed out on during this period.

On the plus side there was more government funding available to address a crisis.

“We were able to do some things with the money we had,” Weldon said. “We were careful to spend it in ways that had a greater impact. Alabama was able to make some gains other states did not, but that money is all gone and we still need the services it provided.”

Weldon and other local school officials have attended legislative conferences with state officials and have been told to be careful with their spending.

The state’s critical education trust fund hasn’t been increasing on the level that was expected. This will likely mean some belt-tightening in the coming years.