- Kenton County Board of Education approved another round of renovations on Monday
- Click the bullet points below to jump to information about each approved project:
More renovation approvals in the Kenton County Schools District took place this week.
Specifically, the Kenton County Board of Education approved new design plans for renovations at Kenton Elementary and Taylor Mill Elementary. The Board also awarded a bid to Ashley Builders Group for site expansion work at River Ridge Elementary.
Kenton County has been making gradual steps toward numerous renovations throughout the district since the enactment of its 2023-2027 District Facility Plan. Several schools were flagged for renovations in the plan, and Monday night’s approvals were the next steps for three of those schools.
Kenton Elementary
“This project is very similar to the other elementary projects that we’ve been working on, which have focused primarily on the HVAC systems,” said Chief Operations Officer Matt Rigg.
Aside from the HVAC upgrades, the work will focus on replacing the roof and various other improvements to the interior and exterior of the building, some of which date back as far as 1950. Initial schematic designs for the work were approved in May last year. District documents indicate the expected costs of the work to be just over $17 million.
Superintendent Henry Webb also brought up of the issue of the school gym’s concrete bleachers – Taylor Mill Elementary also has concrete bleachers, which were discussed at the Board meeting last month. The work, Rigg confirmed, would include the replacement of the current concrete bleachers with roll-out bleachers.
“It’s really going to modernize those gymnasiums and make them much safer,” Webb said.
The bidding for this project is expected to begin later this month with an award scheduled for March. Construction is slated to begin April and is tentatively scheduled to continue until August 2027, according to district documents.
Taylor Mill
The work at Taylor Mill, although similar to the work at Kenton, is still early compared to the other two projects discussed Monday night.
Schematic designs for the school were approved just last month, and these new design documents will flesh out the work approved in January.
“Once we get through approval, we’ll go back and make sure everything is the way we want it to be, just like we did with Kenton Elementary,” Rigg said. “We’ll come back for approval for those construction documents, so that we can get this project out to bid, which will be a little bit later in the spring.”
HVAC work will be the brunt of the construction, but other proposed improvements include improvements to the bathrooms, classrooms, and other parts of the building’s interior, as well as some tuck-pointing improvements. The proposal also calls for a roof replacement, but no changes to parking or traffic circulation.
Early estimates for the Taylor Mill Project put costs of construction at $15 million, not including fees, admin costs and room for contingency funding (i.e. extra money set aside in case some unexpected expense arises). Total cost projections, including all of that ancillary funding, put the project at about $18 million. The district would like to start the project around the end of the school year.
River Ridge
Of the projects approved on Monday, River Ridge is the farthest along. The renovations will focus largely on remedying an issue called stacking, wherein cars line up against each other along Amsterdam Road, from which drivers enter the campus, leading to traffic congestion and safety hazards. Naturally, this is more of a problem at the beginning and end of school days when parents come to pick up their kids.
The board had approved some preliminary plans in September, although initial planning for the renovations dates back to 2023. The 2023 plans stalled due to issues with easements near the school and had to be redone. Final construction documents were approved in December. The plan calls for the construction of a long, looping road around the building, which would then terminate in a new parking lot. The new lot will contain about 90 new spaces, and the loop would be able to accommodate about 150 lined-up cars, Rigg told the Board in December.
The work approved Monday also included some replacement to the lot’s lighting.
Documents submitted to the Board before Monday’s meeting indicate that Ashley Builders Group came in with the lowest bid for the work at roughly $4 million. The district hopes to complete the work by August.