School System Completes Davis Rebuild And Hitting Facility

By LYDIA BERGLAR
News Editor

Dade County Schools wrapped up two construction projects this spring—one that’s been in the talks for years, and one that started about a year ago but has roots in a May 2023 decision.

First, let’s cover the classroom building at Davis Elementary School. In 2019, the school board held a meeting in Davis with the community to discuss whether to tear down the old rock building or renovate it. The board and citizens agreed to tear it down and rebuild.

At that meeting, a renovation was projected to cost $1.6 million (not including work needed to handle asbestos), and the rebuild was projected between $2.3-$2.5 million.

Between 2019 and 2021, the building plans were being prepared, but construction prices skyrocketed. After the years of high inflation, the bids came back over $4.5 million.

The school board voted at the Nov. 2022 board meeting to postpone the project and wait and see if prices dropped. The school system kept an eye on prices until they had decreased a little by early 2024. In the interim, the board voted to close off the end of the corridor that had been covered with a tarp (plus some other structural work at that spot that needed to be completed as part of the rebuild). This cost $240,825.

Then, at the Feb. 2024 monthly meeting, the board approved a bid from KRH Architects to rebuild for $3,897,230. Taking the previous work on the corridor end into account, the grand total comes out to $4,138,055.

Rock from Davis’ old rock building was used in an exterior wall near the school’s main entrance as a nod to the school’s history. Included in this wall is a stone from the old Davis High School and one with the etching “1935 Cole City School.”

When the school board decided to postpone the project, Phillip Hartline (District Two county commissioner) was vocal about his concern that the board would never rebuild and would eventually deem this building unnecessary. The school board also took a lot of heat from Davis residents. See the Nov. 17 and Nov. 23, 2022, issues of the Sentinel for coverage of these opinions.

At the May 2025 county commission meeting, Hartline gave a shout out to the board for completing the project.

The exterior of the building is completed. As of last month’s school board meeting on April 28, the interior ceiling is still being finished, and the Samsung smart boards will soon be mounted. The project is very near completion, and Davis students and teachers will get to enjoy their new space come the fall semester.

In the end, the school board’s decision to postpone the project saved at least $362,000 of taxpayers’ dollars, but inflation drastically increased the expense from the 2019 estimates to the end cost.

The second project is the hitting facility located at Dade County High School to serve the school district’s baseball and softball teams. Readers may recall that the Dade County Board of Education voted at the May 2023 board meeting to turn the old batting cages into the new weight training facility. Some shuffling things around took place to accommodate all athletic needs.

Later that year, softball parents attended the August board meeting to voice displeasure about the new arrangements. Nothing further was heard about the matter until the July 2024 board meeting, at which Josh Ingle (superintendent) reported that the school system had put out a request for proposals for a new hitting facility.

The board approved the $689,100 bid from Pillar Construction. (A small portion of this contract covered work at the DCHS greenhouse.)

In future meetings, the board approved the additional HVAC expense of $64,703 and an access control system and interior and exterior security cameras for $24,983.67, bringing the grand total to $778,786.67.