The Alba-Golden Board of Trustees received the recommendation Monday that the collection of structures composed of the vocational center (workshops and classrooms), the gymnasium, the fieldhouse and the elementary school gymnasium be either replaced with new construction or be brought up to building standards. 

That recommendation was the main finding of a comprehensive report briefed to the board by the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) facility consultant Scott Beane, who conducted the inspections last April.

Beane stated that the collection of buildings on the north side of the campus were constructed in 1977, 1987 and 1995. Each had considerable discrepancies which necessitate either a capital expenditure for new construction or significant investment of maintenance funds to restore their safe functionality. 

TASB provided cost estimates in the range of $25 million for new construction and $4.3 million for maintenance to improve the buildings. Beane advised that with each year of delay in acting on the corrective maintenance, the cost increases by $600,000. 

The two largest costs associated with the buildings are roofs and HVAC systems. 

The buildings on the north end were the only ones in the study which were characterized by a red designation (requiring immediate action) in the inspection results.

The exhaustive inspection conducted last April “counted every door” as Beane noted, and left the board with a detailed discrepancy list of the entire campus. 

TASB valued the replacement cost of the entire district at around $122 million with a corrective maintenance total for the whole campus of $13 million.

Beane is a former superintendent who recently retired from Anderson-Shiro ISD. He had previously served for eight years as superintendent of Big Sandy ISD and had taught for ten years as an agricultural instructor.