Crews work on the new Mason County Middle School. The school was scheduled to open in December, but has been delayed until March.
The opening of the Mason County Middle School has been delayed by several months.
The school was scheduled to open in December after having been delayed previously. However, it was announced on Monday that it may be March before the school opens.
During the October meeting of the Mason County Board of Education on Monday, the Architect for the project Craig Aossey said there have been delays in multiple areas which contributed to the continuing delays of the school opening but now said he believes they are looking at a realistic opening scheduled for March-April of 2024, right after Spring break.
“Part of the delay is that we encountered a lot of rock during the excavation of the foundation for the building, moving rock is harder than moving dirt and that was early on in the project. In addition, there were the site utilities, so as we tried to dig storm drains through the site for the sewer line and conduit there was a lot of rock,” Aossey said.
There were also some delays with materials and supply chain issues which were out of the contractor’s control Aossey explained.
“Right now as you may have heard on NPR two weeks ago, it can take 12-18 months to get a transformer for electricity so getting the power from a temporary source to permanent in the building was later than anticipated. Our electrical contractors had a fire in their warehouse along the way and had to get some replacement pieces which was beyond their control as well,” Aossey said.
Supply chain issues and being able to get materials such as mortar which is used to put concrete blocks together was not only a local problem but a national one, according to Aossey.
“We have also run into labor shortages in certain fields, in particular the masons, there just are not a lot of masons out there right now. Getting steel work done, every steelworker has more than they can handle right now and that is one reason it is a great career opportunity for those kids at the MAGNET school taking those welding classes because they will have a job as soon as they get out of school,” he said.
Aossey said he has multiple projects throughout Kentucky and most of them are behind due to lack of labor right now, many of his projects are even further behind than the middle school he said.
Ross and the members of the board agreed that the delay was not a surprise, Ross said he had recently visited the construction and could see it still needed a lot of work and expected a delay.
Aossey said he hopes there will be no further delay as many eighth-grade students have been highly anticipating entering the new school and he would like to see them have at least a few months in the new middle school.
Word of the project came in March of 2021, and after a bid on the project was accepted officials announced the new school would open by the end of 2022 but groundbreaking did not happen until August 2022.
