Liberty County School System and Liberty County High School officials cut the ribbon Tuesday evening and celebrated the naming of its football field.
The football stadium bears the name of a longtime teacher and coach at the old Liberty County High School who later became a teacher and coach at Bradwell Institute after integration, the late Donell Woods.
“He was an amazing statue of a man,” said school board Chair Verdell Jones.
LCHS also officially named the field at the stadium after longtime coach Kirk Warner, who passed away three years ago after a battle with cancer. LCHS Principal Dr. Warnella Wilder presented Warner’s family with mementoes honoring the occasion.
The school and the school system also showed off the improvements and upgrades to the football stadium and to the baseball and softball fields. The field itself at the stadium, which was put in place last year, now has a new track around it. New fields also were installed for the LCHS baseball and softball fields — Bradwell got similar new fields for its football, baseball and softball programs — and all the upgrades were funded through the education special purpose local option sales tax.
“Our students deserve the better and we can all agree this is one of the fields and complexes around in the state of Georgia,” said Superintendent Dr. Franklin Perry.
Fieldhouse improvements for LCHS baseball and softball came in at $1.6 million, and upgrades to both fields topped $2.38 million. Resurfacing at the football field was more than $3.3 million.
Jones said the events celebrate what ESPLOST can do for the schools’ students.
“This field is nothing less than amazing,” she said. “The softball field is nothing less than amazing. The track is nothing less than amazing.”
An ESPLOST extension vote is underway, and Jones extolled the penny tax’s benefits. The school system also recently has shown off renovations to Midway Middle, Joseph Martin Elementary and Liberty Elementary that topped $11 million, all a result of ESPLOST proceeds. Jones noted that even those passing through Liberty County who stop and buy something are contributing to the ESPLOST coffers.
Without ESPLOST, Jones worried that improvements to schools and the building of new schools may have to come from the general fund and property tax receipts.
“The burden is going to rest on property owners if we did not have this extra penny for maintenance, for buses,” she said. “We need technology, we need books, we need all those things the law allows us to buy with that extra penny. We’re happy that everybody gets to contribute to the educating of our children. We want to relieve the burden off our property owners as much as we can so we can do these other things, like make sure our children transported safely and we can do the maintenance and upgrades we need to do.”
The ESPLOST extension on the ballot is expected to raise $112 million over five years. Among the items the school system wants to fund with the additional penny tax are a new school, expected to cost $48 million, and an addition at the Liberty College and Career Academy pegged at $5.5 million.
The school system also is looking at replacing the roofs at seven schools which are at the end of their service life expectancies for a total of nearly $7.5 million. Close to another $7 million is scheduled to be spent replacing HVAC systems at several schools and $500,000 will go toward purchases of new buses to replace older buses.
Buses the system now buys also have air-conditioning, Jones noted. Previous ESPLOSTs also have funded safety upgrades at the school buildings and campuses, she said.
“When we look at what’s going on in the nation right now, the lack of safety at schools is sad,” she said. “We have a new landscape now. We’ve done lots of things to improve the safety of our schools. We have put things in place, with these very pennies, that help to keep our children safe.”
Early voting for ESPLOST VII is being held at the Historic Liberty County Courthouse and at the Liberty County Community Complex and polls at precincts will be open March 18. Jones thanked the community for its support of the previous and current ESPLOSTs.
“We appreciate everything they have done so far and we hope we can continue to do good things,” she said. “It really shares the burden among everybody and not just a small group of people.”
