BOE To Meet Tonight

The Stephens County Board of Education is expected to continue discussions over the grounds contract for the school system at its meeting tonight.

Talks started on the topic at Thursday’s school board work session.

School officials said that two bids were received for the contract to maintain all of the grounds for the school system.

However, school system staff said one of the bids was disqualified because the bidder did not complete the package, so there is only one eligible bid.

Stephens County Board of Education Chairman Tony Crunkleton said that he feels more would bid if they could break it up by school.

“Seems to me we could get, in my opinion, some other people to submit a bid if we could split it up into sites,” said Crunkleton.

School system staff said that bidders were in fact given the option to bid on only one school or a group of schools less than the whole system.

According to staff, one bidder that did that was disqualified for not submitting other needed parts of the package, not because they did not bid on the whole system.

Crunkleton said it needs to be clearer to bidders that they can bid on just one school or a group of schools.

Meanwhile, School Board Member Jim Bellamy said he would like to see more local bidders.

“The requirements were very thick,” said Bellamy. “That may have been intimidating, I don’t know. I am thinking if we simplify it a bit, it might attract more people.”

However, Board Member Rodney Moore said he feels the system needs to honor the bid process it followed.

“My concern is we approve the package to be bid, people bid on it, we have one who essentially won the bid, and now we are going to say ‘let’s change it’,” said Moore. “I do not think that is right.”

School Board Member David Fricks said he agrees with Moore.

“We would be in a heck of a mess if the one who won the bid decided to say ‘I’m done, I’m out of here’,” said Fricks.

The Stephens County Board of Education is set to meet at 5:30 p.m. today at the Stephens County School System Administrative Offices, located in the old Big A Elementary School.