Architect Craig Buckley and his firm, James W. Buckley & Associates, have been working with staff at the existing Southeast Bulloch High School and Bulloch County Schools central office to tighten the floorplan of the proposed new SEB High in an effort to trim potential costs. For now, it's being planned as a 2,000-student school, which probably won't be completed at that size until 2029 or 2030, when it would open for the first time.
That would be a first phase, expandable in the future. The earlier concept, announced last year, was for a 2,500-student high school, expandable to 3,000 students. Superintendent Charles Wilson acknowledged last fall that it would be not only the school system's largest facility ever, but by far its most expensive.
In a time of soaring construction costs, the estimated price tag for the two-story, originally 422,000-square-foot building climbed from an earlier $112.5 million rough estimate to $135 million by March of this year. Meanwhile, expected funding lagged in the $95 million to $125 million range.
This includes the current five-year run of the 1% Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, or E-SPLOST, capped at $110 million but with only $80 million borrowable in advance through a bond issue under terms of the November 2022 referendum, plus a projected $15 million in state funding for school construction the county system has earned. So Board of Education members have been seeking cost-cutting steps. While the architect reported Sep.
