Civil Municipal - Feb 2024

students will all be in one building. Our buildings are old and in much need of repair. It will probably be easier to build a new building rather than try to continue to fix the old ones.” MATHIS DETAILS UPGRADES WITHIN THE CLASSROOMS. “Using the extra funds that we received after the COVID pandemic, we made changes in our students’ furniture; they all got new desks, tables, and chairs. We were also able to create our STEM labs and we used some of those funds to purchase new computers – 300 desktop computers and 400 laptops.” “We were also able to update our wireless router system.We also have been using funds to create our sensory classrooms for our students and we bought sensory toolboxes for all our teachers for use in the classroom. So, we have a lot of projects going on right now to improve the infrastructure here.” LOCAL AND REGIONAL PARTNERS Meanwhile, Hancock County schools need to be maintained and,when necessary,upgraded, renovated, and/or replaced. Harper provides a list of projects: “We are repaving parking lots to make sure that kids who come by car are safe. The roof of the elementary school is being redone and we’re possibly going to work on the roof of the high school.” “We’ve made improvements to our football stadium with funds that came from our local SPLOST. We have artificial turf now. We have rubberized our track, which is big for us because it will actually give us the chance to hold track tournaments here. Our kids always must go on the road to compete. We’re starting a project, next spring, to renovate our gymnasium at the middle/high school with ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) funds through the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act.” “We are in the very early stages of talking about rebuilding our elementary school so that our Early Head Start, Head Start, Pre-K, and elementary school FOCUSING ON CHILDREN 184 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 5, ISSUE 02