Early voting is off to a slow start for the Liberty County Board of Education’s education special local option sales tax extension referendum.
County elections officials report 120 ballots have been cast through the first two days of early voting.
Superintendent Dr. Franklin Perry said the school system can’t tell people how to vote in the election, but they can point to what previous ESPLOSTs have provided.
“A lot of people think it is a new ESPLOST. It is not,” he said at Tuesday’s school board meeting. “People are still not clear this is a continuation of ESPLOST.”
If approved, the ESPLOST will be extended for another five years and it is expected to generate about $1.65 million per month, bringing in $112 million over its exten sion. En rol l ment in Liberty County Schools is just under 11,000, and officials project those numbers to hit 12,250 in three years. Officials have allotted about 44% of the expected $112 million, or $48.8 million, will go to construction of a new school. Technology purchases and upgrades will account for about 16%, or $17.425 million.
School system officials don’t know where exactly the new school will be built, and what grades it will house, but they are looking at locating it in Hinesville. The school likely will have elementary school grades and could wind up being a K-8 school, based on the school’s enrollment and population projections.
The proposed new school will have an enrollment of between 850 and 1,000 students.
Several schools are slated to get renovations and additions through another round of ESPLOST. The Liberty College and Career Academy would get five new programs and could house up to another 300 students per year.
Site work also is planned for the Pre-K Center, Liberty Joseph Martin, Taylors Creek and Waldo Pafford elementary schools, Midway Middle School and Bradwell Institute. Minor renovations are scheduled for the Horizons Learning Center, Frank Long Elementary, all three middle schools, Bradwell and Liberty County High School.
The school system also hopes to add to its bus fleet through an ESPLOST extension. The school system has bought 60 buses under ESPLOST, including eight in the last year. The average age of the county schools’ buses, once at 19 years old, is now down to nine.
Under the current ESPLOST, new turf fields were installed at Bradwell’s Olvey Field/Hokey Jackson Stadium and at Liberty County High’s Donell Woods Stadium/ Kirk Warner Field. ESPLOST also funded the new track surfaces at BI and LCHS, along with new turf fields for the two high schools’ baseball and softball fields.
Midway Middle School cut the ribbon in December on a recent $4.7 million renovation project that brought upgrades throughout the school, funded through ESPLOST. Liberty Elementary had a $3.8 million renovation, courtesy of ESPLOST proceeds, unveiled in January 2024.
Early voting continues through March 14. Voting at precincts will take place March 18.