Board will to vote on principals, rezoning, sports fields funding

The Muscogee County School Board is scheduled to vote on the appointment of three principals, spot re-zoning and funding for sports field improvements at its meeting Monday.

The meeting begins at 6 p.m. in the Muscogee County Public Education Center on Macon Road.

▪ The three persons recommended for a principal position are Patricia Woodall at Brewer Elementary, Lamont Sheffield at Dorothy Height Elementary and Kevin Scott at Georgetown Elementary.

Woodall is currently assistant principal at Dimon Magnet Academy, Sheffield is assistant principal at Baker Middle School and Scott is a turnaround principal at Jean Childs Young Middle School in Atlanta.

▪ To pay for the expanded scope and cost of upgrading some high school sports fields, superintendent David Lewis wants to take all of the $7.2 million that voters approved for projects at five high schools and spend it on two of them while seeking additional money for the rest.

The original funding comes from the 1 percent Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax that Columbus voters renewed in 2015 for another five years or until $192,185,000 is collected for 24 capital projects.

Five of those projects are upgrades to sports fields at Columbus, Hardaway, Jordan, Kendrick and Shaw. Ground can be broken on the Jordan and Kendrick projects in two months, MCSD construction director Bobby Hecht has told the board.

That work includes building baseball and softball fields at Kendrick, a softball field at Jordan and improvements to football practice fields at the schools.

▪ The superintendent is recommending spot rezoning for the 2019 school year.

According to the school district there are areas of concern with some enrollment numbers and space available in certain schools and the construction of a new Spencer High School.

The plan involves rezoning around 140 students from Dorothy Height Elementary School to St.Mary’s Elementary School and rezoning about 100 students from North Columbus Elementary School to Double Churches Elementary School.

Approximately 130 Carver High School students would be rezoned to Spencer.

▪ The board will honor the top three Muscogee Educational Excellence Foundation teacher of the year candidates. They are Melanie Gouine from North Columbus Elementary School, Dawnell Jacobs from Early College Academy and Kristan Macphail from the Rainey-McCullers School of the Arts.

▪ The board will honor Owen Steele from Hannan Magnet Academy who won the region spelling bee.

▪ Three people have asked to speak in the public agenda. Those are J. Nathan Smith, Theresa El-Amin and Carol Jameson.

▪ Rev. Adrian Chester will give the inspiration.

▪ Students from Double Churches Elementary will lead the Pledge of Allegiance.

This story was originally published March 18, 2018 at 2:36 PM with the headline "Board will to vote on principals, rezoning, sports fields funding."