Baseball Anyone?

By PJ Martin

Editor

The Herald-News

 

In April of 2023, The Herald-News published a story concerning the use of various funds by Metcalfe County Schools on building projects.

Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds were received through the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act (ARPA ESSER III) and CARES Act as part of the Education Stabilization Fund to deal with the impact of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).

At that time, the Board of Education listed two BG1 items on their agenda. BG1s are construction requests required by the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE).

The Herald-News reached out to Superintendent Josh Hurt at that time for clarification on the plans of the Board of Education.

The following is an excerpt from Superintendent Hurt’s response to The Herald-News which was printed in its entirety in the May 24, 2023, newspaper.

“…One of those is to use ESSER funds, which are federal dollars, to expand the current softball/multipurpose building on the school grounds. The building is currently used by softball, shooting sports, middle school football, and the 21^st Century after-school program among other…

…It includes renovation to the current middle school baseball field (Ralph Reece Field). The idea will be to raise the field and prevent it from being so easily flooded…”

The athletic/multipurpose building has already been completed and is in use and the raising of the baseball field is in process at this time. The topsoil has been removed and placed in mounds while various pieces of heavy equipment are adding dirt to the field. A cement wall has been installed along the perimeter of the baseball field side that faces the road and the creek. The wall runs parallel to the road at the outfield site and continues until its height lowers at the dugout side.

Unfortunately, on February 15^th in the middle of that work, a flood occurred and as you can see in one of the photos, the field flooded again as did many other areas in and around Edmonton.

The comment that The Herald-News is hearing from many parents and residents of the county is, “Why didn’t they use that money to build a school bus garage on higher ground? We’ve needed one for a long time.”

The Herald-News reached out to Superintendent Josh Hurt to get an update on the Ralph Reece Field project and questioned why a new school bus garage had not been built. We also inquired about the cost of the work and the source of that funding. Hurt responded to our questions with the following details.

“It looks like the baseball portion of the overall project is going to cost around 1.3 million dollars to complete. The project is really not itemized by location, so that is a pretty solid estimate.

As for the funding, it is being paid for using what are called “Restricted Funds.” In a school system, some monies are required by law to be spent only on building projects. In that case, the state provides matching funds (in our case those matches are actually more than our contribution). So local dollars used actually cover less than half the total expense. While no ESSRS (Federal/Covid) money is being used for the baseball field, that money has been used to fund other items including but not limited to the new indoor building with turf and the new roof on the high school. Additionally, over the past three years, we have purchased nine new buses which account for nearly 1/3 of our total fleet. Seven of those were paid for using ESSRS money.

All of these actions have been board-approved and have followed all state laws and regulations on funding, notice, and open meetings.

As far as the bus garage is concerned, no one is in disagreement that we need a new garage at a new location. In fact, our current board has already begun to research locations and ideas to that end. I would suggest it is a false dichotomy to consider one project to be at odds with the other. It is not really an “either/or” scenario. We can and will be able to complete the current project(s) and still make a new bus garage happen. And, we can do it while keeping the tax rate steady and reasonably low (Metcalfe County currently ranks 130^th out 171 districts in tax rate which puts us in the bottom quarter of all school districts). Further, we hope to build on last year’s 6% pay increase for our staff by continuing to improve our compensation package while also combating possible federal cuts by using our solid financial position to maintain staffing levels regardless of national political headwinds.”

Keep reading The Herald-News as it continues to report on these projects.