OXFORD – While the plans for the first phase of the district’s capital improvement project are being reviewed by the New York State Education Department, Oxford leaders are continuing to move forward with plans for a second, larger scale project.
“It’s on their desk,” Superintendent Randy Squier told members of the Oxford school board last week, referring to the design documents for the Phase I capital project approved by voters last September. If all goes according to plan, he said, the district will be ready to go to bid on the $4.65 million building project this fall.
But that isn’t the only iron Oxford has in the fire with the state. Squier said the district had also consulted SED regarding the preliminary wish list drawn up earlier this year for a second, larger project, referred to as Phase II.
There were a “lot of no’s,” the district administrator reported. Some of those “no’s,” items which the state agency said would not be aidable, included a proposed expansion of the Middle School gymnasium, and the addition of a second level in the building’s “small gym,” as the multi-purpose room is often referred. SED would, however, support many of the other reconstruction ideas brought forward as well as construction of a new bus garage, he reported.
Discussions regarding the project will continue at the next meeting of the district’s facility committee meeting, scheduled for 6 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 9. According to Squier, the district’s architects, the Bernier Carr Group, will be in attendance. His hope, he said, is to have a proposal ready to present to voters for their approval this fall.