SOCSD Announced Opening of New Partnership School
SOCSD Announced Opening of New Partnership School
THE DISPATCH
SOCSD Lewis Holliday (courtesy photo)
The Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District-Mississippi State University partnership school is now projected to open in the late fall of 2018, three to four months later than previously expected, SOCSD Superintendent Lewis Holloway confirmed Wednesday. The project, which will house and educate all sixth- and seventh-grade students in Oktibbeha County, is still moving forward, he said, but the administrative process developing the school has slowed down its progress and tentatively pushed back the opening date.
“Normally, a school district just designs and builds a new campus. It’s a much speedier process (without university and state-level involvement),” he said. “We had to go through the (university’s) design review committee, and that took several months that we weren’t anticipating.”
MSU Chief Communications Officer Sid Salter said the new timeline estimate is a conservative one and the university is confident it and SOCSD “can successfully navigate any issues that arise.”
“In any project of this nature, such delays are often unavoidable,” he said.
Once completed, the roughly $30 million project will serve as a model education platform in the state and help solve issues with classroom overcrowding created after the Oktibbeha County School District and Starkville School District merged.
Funding for the partnership school comes from three levels: state lawmakers appropriated $10 million, MSU pledged approximately $10 million in land and money and a local $16 million bond issuance will fund construction costs, furnishings and other districtwide infrastructure needs.
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Teenage residents of Columbus’ Palmer Home for Children have been helping fans on MSU game day to find parking at Cadence Bank, right across the street from The Mill. The teens collect the $20 parking fees – all of which goes to the Palmer Home locations in Columbus and Hernando, as well as a partner location in Tennessee. In addition to helping them to raise much-needed funding, it also raises awareness of the fact that the children’s homes even exist. The local Palmer Home provides a home, food, clothing, and education for about 112 local children who might not otherwise have had ready access to any of those things.
Roughly a hundred MSU student volunteers recently joined forces to pack and ship five thousand meals to be sent out to hungry families in Mississippi and beyond, as part of a project to help raise awareness of food insecurity.The Oxfam Hunger Banquet model was used for their pre-work meal, where students were divided up into several groups meant to proportionally represent various “income levels” and what families at those levels might find themselves eating. The smallest group by far – those randomly chosen as the “high income” group, sat down at the tables for a multi-course meal with real plates and silverware; the largest two groups – the “low income” ones, sat on the floor with paper plates, plastic forks, a mound of mashed potatoes – and precious little else. Students reportedly ate relatively little, many of them never having previously known just how bad many families in need really have it.
