When North Pike Superintendent of Schools Dr. Ben Cox and high school principal Daryl Brock stand outside the gutted North Pike High gym and scan the open land south, west and east of the campus, they see the future.
They point out sites for the new softball field, band practice field and football-soccer practice field. They also envision the construction of new buildings to accommodate two of the schools in the county’s fastest growing school district.
Behind them, work continues on the renovation of the gym, which was built in the late 1960s. The renovation is an ambitious $1.9 million project to expand the facility’s seating capacity and add five extra classrooms to accommodate growth at the high school.
Another construction project is the expansion of the school district’s administration building to add three more offices and a work room.
“We’re doing all of this work without having to borrow money,” Cox said.
The gym renovation, which is expected to be completed by Oct. 1, is funded by interest from the school district’s 16th Section land account, money in the district’s fund balance and revenue from the 2008 and 2009 fiscal budgets.
Cox said after the project bid was accepted in February that school officials should be able to use the gym floor for basketball practice on Sept. 1.
When the renovations are complete, the gym will have an art classroom on the north side of the building and four classrooms on the south. It will have a new main entrance on the west side.
“People will walk in the new entrance and enter a lobby with a concession stand,” Cox said.
Because the new softball field will be directly across from the gym’s entrance, he said, the gym’s concession stand and rest-rooms will be used for girls softball games.
Inside the gym, the bleachers will be elevated three feet and configured to accommodate 700 people — more than the 550 people it held during the recent basketball season — with dressing rooms built under the bleachers.
But right now the changes to the gym are only a series of architect’s drawings. Employees of Paul Jackson and Sons of Brookhaven, the project contractor, have gutted the building — removing the coaches’ offices, rest-rooms, concession stand and other offices that occupied the building — in preparation for the renovation.
“The building codes have changed since this building was constructed, and the best thing to do is gut the building — pull out the wiring and the plumbing — and rebuild to being it up to code,” said Jason Dunaway, construction superintendent for the contractor.
The building, he added, is structurally sound.
The contractor’s crew does its work in front of an audience of students, teachers and visitors passing through the southern portion of the high school campus. Currently gym’s southern wall is missing, providing a window of the gym work to passersby.
To visitors examining the interior, the opening provides a view of part of the 27 acres the school district acquired in 2006 from Southwest Mississippi Community College.
The acquisition provided North Pike the land to build the football-soccer practice field and band practice field.
It has also provided room for additional growth at the high school.
“This will help us alleviate our traffic and parking problems,” Brock said, adding that students now use a new asphalt road to leave the campus.
Pointing to a section of land adjacent to a student parking area, he said, “That land has been graded and sloped for parking, so we’ll be able to use that. We’ll probably put gravel on it for a while until we can pave it.”
He pointed to another area closer to the road. “I can see us building a new classroom building right there.”
Brock said the decision to build the practice fields and softball field were to bring facilities closer to the school, adding that the soccer teams and the girls softball team now have to leave the campus to practice. The girls currently play their games at Johnston Station.
“It also will help the baseball field,” Brock said. “The football team practices on the baseball field and that affects its condition.”
He points to a blocking sled in right field.
“When I was principal here, we did everything on the baseball field,” Cox said.
“Football, soccer, softball … everything.”
Cox said the additional land will also allow the school district to build more classrooms for the high school and nearby elementary school along the school properties’ perimeter.
“We’ll have enough room to expand,” he said.
