Madison Schools make $10 million purchase
Madison schools superintendent Ronnie McGehee and his colleagues will be getting quite the office upgrade come March when they move their administrative headquarters from an old middle school building in remote Flora to a prime real estate spot on Highland Colony Parkway in Ridgeland.
The school district announced last week it had purchased Ergon's former Diversified Technology Property, or the DTI Campus, in Ridgeland to house its administrative offices and the district's preschool for children with special needs.
The school district paid just under $10 million for the two buildings on the 28-acre campus. Because of a deal with Ergon, the district essentially got $17 million worth of property for the $9.9 million price tag, McGehee said.
The Jackson-based Ergon "made a sizeable concession in the purchase price" as part of the deal to help out the school district, according to Ergon's press release announcing the purchase.
The school district paid for the property with a combination of 16th section land money and money from its fund balance that was allocated specifically to the building that will house the special services preschool.
McGehee and other administrators looked at building a new preschool and central office on 16th section lands and the estimated cost was around $10 million total, according to the district's finance director Debbie Jones.
16th section lands are set aside by the state to help generate income for school districts. School boards, under the supervision of the Secretary of State, act as trustees of the lands.
Essentially, the district is getting more space, opportunities for future expansion and consolidation of alll services with the Ergon deal for around the same price as building, McGehee said.
The district will be located on the 28-acre campus in Ridgeland, where McGehee says 65 percent of the district's student population will be within a 10-mile radius of the headquarters. The 54,000-square-foot office complex will house its administrative offices and the preschool will be in the 88,000-square-foot building behind the complex.
Currently, about 50 of those preschoolers and 22 employees are housed at Old Towne Middle School in Ridgeland. When the preschool at the new building opens up in August of next year, 10 classrooms will be freed up for Old Towne's use.
"Ergon is glad to be in a position to offer this facility to the Madison County School District. Many of our employees live in Madison County, and their children attend schools in the area … we're delighted that the DTI Campus will be used for a greater purpose, and excited about the benefits it will provide both the school district and the families it serves," Jim Defoe, vice president of Ergon Properties, Inc., stated in the company's press release.
The district will be able to consolidate different services scattered across the county into the Ridgeland location. This consolidation will free up classroom spaces at a number of schools in the district thus preventing it from having to build or expand as student enrollment continues to grow.
Rankin County School District, which had 19,382 students enrolled compared to Madison's 12,548 last academic year, built a 27,000-square-foot building next to its original 6,000-square-foot building in Brandon. The district spent a total of $9 million in renovating costs to the old building, construction of the next building and site work in the area.
The district received $3 million from the Board of Supervisors and borrowed about $5.7 million which it will pay off by 2019, according to the school district's Chief Financial Officer Kevin Brantley.
To contact Kate Royals, call (601) 360-4619 or email kroyals@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @KRRoyals on Twitter.