QUESTION: Is it true that a mobile unit was installed at Eastlawn Elementary School at the beginning of this school year but hasn’t been used since – and now the school system is saying Eastlawn needs a $12 million addition?
ANSWER: A used mobile unit had been placed on the campus of Eastlawn Elementary School at the beginning of the school year but remains unoccupied because “there’s a lot of work to be done,” ABSS chief operations officer Greg Hook recently confirmed for The Alamance News.
Meanwhile, Hook earlier this month unveiled to the school board a raft of building repairs and future expansion needs that include a potential 10-classroom addition at Eastlawn Elementary School, which he estimated would cost $12 million. (Hook’s list of future expansion needs also include classroom additions at Alexander Wilson and Elon Elementary schools and Woodlawn Middle School, estimated to cost another $35 million on top of the costs to expand Eastlawn.)
Hook told the board at the time that the four schools that need classroom additions to accommodate enrollment growth are long-range projects that aren’t currently planned for a particular year, though he noted that all four schools “are already at capacity” and need to be examined.
The administration at Eastlawn Elementary School, Hook said, has requested a 10-classroom addition because “there’s nowhere to put mobiles.”
Eastlawn Elementary School currently has about seven mobile units, including the one installed last year.
School board chairman Sandy Ellington-Graves told the newspaper last Wednesday that the vacant modular unit at Eastlawn Elementary School had been relocated from Southern High School.
Ellington-Graves also said she had confirmed with Kim McVey, the chief finance officer for ABSS, that no payments had been disbursed to a company, Modular Technologies of Kinston.
Then-assistant superintendent Dr. Todd Thorpe had proposed buying a used trailer from Modular Technologies in October 2021, but the school board balked, with a majority of its members saying they felt installing a used trailer at Eastlawn Elementary School would make the property look run-down.
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