By Katie Northcott, News Director
At a work session on Tuesday, April 7, Dr. Joey Vaughn, Director of Schools for Manchester City Schools, asked the Manchester Board of Mayor and Aldermen (BOMA) to consider funding the construction of a new middle school building.
Vaughn began his presentation by noting that despite additions and renovations, College Street Elementary and Westwood Middle School (WMS) are at capacity while Westwood Elementary School has a small amount of room for growth. He projected that WMS would have a population of 550 to 600 students for the 2026-2027 school year.
“We’ve hit the stage where we’re going to have to expand,” Vaughn said. “The Board of Mayor and Aldermen asked us to come with a plan, so today we are with you with a plan. We’re excited about the possibilities.”
The school board had worked with Jason Morris of Kaatz, Binkley, Jones & Morris Architects. Morris presented a plan to build a middle school on the Batesville property purchased by the school district in 2023. The planned building would house 620 students with the option to grow the building so that it could function as a high school in the future.
Morris estimated the building cost would be $375 per square foot for a total of $41 million for just the building. He estimated furniture costs and soft costs at $3 million each. Sports fields would incur another $6 million in expenses, bringing the total project cost to around $53 million.
Vaughn said that if the project moved forward the old WMS building would likely become an elementary school.
Alderman Ryan French said that he would prefer to construct a building that could function as a high school now rather than pushing the high school into the future. He said it would help address overcrowding at Coffee County Central High School, which is in the Coffee County School District.
“The community has spoken clearly that there is no appetite to consolidate schools,” French said. “I feel like if we build a middle school, we’re taking care of the overcrowding of the current structure that we have, but if we build a high school, we address overcrowding in the city and countywide. I think from a community standpoint that would be more responsible.”
French said that building costs would likely continue to rise if the city waited to build a high school, making the project more expensive the longer it is put off.
Mayor Joey Hobbs agreed but said that the decision would come down to cost. Morris estimated that the high school project would cost around $75 million. Vaughn added that school district staff would need to nearly double if a new high school was constructed.
“When I first came into office [the city finance director] and I sat down with our financial advisor, and we had the conversation around–I think it was a $50 million school if I remember correctly–and he told us that we were going to need probably about five million more dollars’ worth of revenue to pay for it,” Hobbs said.
Hobbs estimated that a $75 million project would require $7 million to $7.5 million in new revenue. He directed Anthony Burrows, the city’s finance director, how much the city would save on taxes it currently pays to the county to send Manchester residents to Coffee County Central High School.
Vaughn said he and the school board would support building a high school but understood the budget limitations.
“The City of Manchester School Board has had a goal for a long time of being a complete district, which is a high school,” Vaughn said. “We were asked to come forward with a plan for immediate needs, and that is the middle school.”
Vice Mayor Mark Messick asked whether the city could afford the project while the city’s Water and Sewer Department requires extra money to make necessary repairs to the sewer system. Hobbs said the projects were not related.
“[The water and sewer department] pays for [its] own money,” Hobbs said. “That’s two separate buckets. … They’re separate bond issues. One business doesn’t overlap into the other one.”
Hobbs said that since the work session was mainly geared toward presenting the project plan, the BOMA could discuss financing the project at a later meeting. He hoped the BOMA would make a decision about how to move forward with the project by August.
“I think I hear everybody loud and clear that it’s time that we really over the next 60 days have some real conversations and have a direction of what we really want to do,” Hobbs said.
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