Florence 1 school board approves building stadiums

[SF Band dad]

Florence One Schools board approves......, stadiums
BY LAUREN OWENS Morning News
lowens@florencenews.com
Jan 17, 2020

<snip>…. The board also voted to construct athletic facilities at each of the three high schools in the district through a lease-purchase agreement of $11 million leased over the course of 10 years.

The money will purchase 5,000-seat bleachers, modular buildings for locker rooms, expansion for buildings, and turf fields. The fields will give junior varsity and varsity football, boys’ soccer and girls’ soccer teams a place to play home games on their high school campuses.

The stadiums should be ready for the 2020 football season; however, the turf fields will not be added until 2021, O’Malley said.

< Excerpt - full article at the headline link >

South Florence, West Florence and Wilson high schools will have their own stadiums this fall. Florence Memorial Stadium will go idle after 71 years of use.

[CITYSLICKER]

NEW WONT HELP YALL

[SF Band dad]

Reactions pour in about F1S' future on-campus stadiums
BY SCOTT CHANCEY
Morning News
schancey@florencenews.com

FLORENCE, S.C. — Jeff Calabrese has a rare perspective, knowing what it’s like to have coached home and visiting teams in Memorial Stadium football games.

He coached West Florence for four seasons (2001-04) and has been Hartsville’s coach since 2005. Calabrese’s most recent visits to Memorial were last fall when his Red Foxes beat South Florence and Wilson.

After Florence One Schools announced Friday that on-campus stadiums would be built at South Florence, West Florence and Wilson for this fall, Calabrese was ecstatic.

< Excerpts - Full article at the headline link >

[SF Band dad]

On Aug. 21, South Florence hosts Bluffton

Here kitty, Kitty!!!

[coachinggrapevine]

Florence One Schools board approves......, stadiums
BY LAUREN OWENS Morning News
lowens@florencenews.com
Jan 17, 2020

<snip>…. The board also voted to construct athletic facilities at each of the three high schools in the district through a lease-purchase agreement of $11 million leased over the course of 10 years.

The money will purchase 5,000-seat bleachers, modular buildings for locker rooms, expansion for buildings, and turf fields. The fields will give junior varsity and varsity football, boys’ soccer and girls’ soccer teams a place to play home games on their high school campuses.

The stadiums should be ready for the 2020 football season; however, the turf fields will not be added until 2021, O’Malley said.

< Excerpt - full article at the headline link >

South Florence, West Florence and Wilson high schools will have their own stadiums this fall. Florence Memorial Stadium will go idle after 71 years of use.

Modular buildings for locker rooms? Wonder what that's going to look like. I'm not sure if FS1 has enough money to do it the right way. Maybe no longer having to pay for a career center will give enough room in the budget.

[SF Band dad]

Modular buildings for locker rooms? Wonder what that's going to look like. I'm not sure if FS1 has enough money to do it the right way. Maybe no longer having to pay for a career center will give enough room in the budget.

The timing of the two proposals was bad but I understand that both projects are time sensitive. I'm not sure what we'll get at each high school for $3.7M each, but it will surely be better than Florence Memorial, we won't be riding buses 7 miles for home games or playing them on Thursday night.

Shifting the career center classes over to FDTC is projected to save $4M a year, since the building is being retained I'm guessing that is mostly salary and benefit costs. Some savings may come from the removal of all mobile classrooms at SFHS. I don't think the increased capacity at SFHS can be considered a savings but it will push-out the need to build another high school for several years. SF capacity will increase to around 2500.

Closing the career center is a bitter pill, but the FDTC is well equipped and under-utilized. Both are publicly funded facilities, consolidation just makes a lot of sense.

I wish the school district, county and city governments would cooperate more often. Example: The City of Florence built a 31,000 sq.ft gymnasium 2 years ago. Why? Every high school and middle school in the district has a gym, all but 1 elementary school has a half-gym. When I grew up the county rec department routinely used school facilities, when did that stop and why? What a waste of publicly owned facilities. I asked one of the city rec managers about it once, she told me those facilities are owned by the school district. I corrected her, they are owned by the taxpaying citizens.