An architect’s drawing of the future Chiefland Middle High School campus shows the location of all the buildings. The school will be constructed at the site of the current campus.
By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
Funding for the first phase of the future Chiefland Middle High School was signed into law Monday by Gov. Ron DeSantis as part of the state’s $92.2 billion budget for the coming year.
School District officials in Levy County had anxiously waited to find out if the project was on a list of projects DeSantis vetoed, but the school project survived.
The project is scheduled to be constructed in three phases. Each phase will cost about $12.4 million. The new school will stand at the site of the current campus.
School Board Chairman Paige Brookins of Chiefland was riding her bicycle when she took a call from a reporter and expressed how she felt about getting a new school.
“I am thrilled. I am ecstatic. We have lobbied and worked so hard; all of us, the budget committee, school board members, the superintendent, staff, the builders; our legislators in Tallahassee lobbied for it; everybody that wrote letters helped in support of our school; it is fabulous,” Brookins said. “I am so proud I can’t see straight, but it took everybody.”
Brookins, a CHS graduate, said she is hopeful the school district will do what was done in Williston when the new school was constructed a few years ago, which was to allow people to see the old buildings before they are torn down and let them take home bricks from it.
The gymnasium at CMHS may be the oldest building on campus.
“My grandfather was one of the first ones in that gym, so I would definitely like the bricks,” she said.
She said the new cafeteria will be constructed first along with an additional driveway for access.
School Superintendent Jeff Edison said construction of the first phase of the new school will start sometime this year. He said he felt good about getting the funding for the first of three phases. The project was approved by the Florida Legislature and the governor.
“It’s very good. I’m very excited. We’ve spent five years of work on this,” Edison said. “You have to go through this long process because we’re using someone else’s money.” He was referring to state special facilities funds used to build new public schools.
“There’s a huge process to go through, number one, just to get the money; just getting the facility classified in such a way that we could justify tearing the buildings down,” Edison said.
Edison said students won’t be housed in portable buildings during the construction process. Students will be housed in existing buildings on campus. He said this project will be his first experience building a new campus in phases.
When school officials were preparing to go to Tallahassee five years ago to make a presentation for the new Williston Middle High School, Edison said he told the group to get ready because they would return to do the same thing for Chiefland in five years.
He said the first phase of funding wasn’t a sure thing, but the final two years of funding for school construction projects like this one are more certain.
“Once you get in and get the first of the allocations, it’s pretty good for the other two years,” Edison said.
Neither Edison nor Brookins were certain when the last Chiefland High School was constructed at the current site. Brookins guessed it was in the neighborhood of 80 years ago.
“It’ll be the last one in my lifetime,” Edison said. “A lot of people worked on it.”
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Enterprise Reporting by Terry Witt June 29, 2020 Posted June 29, 2020
