Crocker Construction approved for Oman renovation

The Jackson-Madison County School Board approved a number of items at its February meeting on Thursday.

The first one was approving the construction manager for Hub City Central, which will consist of Oman Arena and the new Jackson Central-Merry football stadium that will have artificial turf and a TSSAA regulation track around it

Crocker Construction was the only bidder on the project, so they were the one approved.

Much like has happened in different conversations in Jackson City Council and Madison County Commission, board member Debbie Gaugh asked about there being only one bid on the project.

Other than Karen Bell, the County’s finance director, explaining miscommunication that resulted in a late bid from Crocker and a required repeat request for proposal, there was no answer given.

The academic calendar for the 2023-24 school year was approved.

When Superintendent Marlon King gave his report to the board, he made a couple of announcements.

He mentioned the district is still getting documents from Tennessee Educational Services Association (TESA) ahead of the district’s budgeting season. He expects those documents to be in hand by the end of the month so they can begin planning out budget proposals to go before the Board later this spring and early summer.

The district received a $95,000 grant for industrial certification education. He credited JCM Principal Nathan Lewis for writing that grant.

“This will allow us to partner with more local industries to give more students the opportunity to receive on-the-job training while also gaining education credits and being closer to being officially certified in their chosen field upon graduation,” King said.

King said the charter school ad hoc committee will be rolling out the days it plans to meet as the committee looks over all information regarding possible charter schools applying to come to Madison County. American Classical Education did officially apply again before the Feb. 1 deadline to bring a charter school to the county.

King said he their president, Phillip Schwenk, will be invited to speak to the committee.

King also said he and board member Jason Compton met with the Hub City Central vision committee earlier in the day to begin to develop the vision for Oman Arena and what all should be housed there now that it’s under JMCSS ownership.

Compton spoke about some of the possibilities that were discussed during the meeting after the board meeting had adjourned.

According to Compton, there were discussions about utilizing the basement for batting cages and artificial turf areas that could be used for baseball and soccer teams on days they couldn’t get work in outside.

Medical training and athletic training areas were also discussed.

“This meeting this morning was really brainstorming possibilities of what can be done in there,” Compton said. “And future meetings, we’ll really start to refine that from ‘what can’ to ‘what should’ be done to benefit the students of Jackson-Madison County Schools.”

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news