Demopolis BOE makes hires, alters DHS project

The Demopolis City Schools Board of Education made four personnel moves during a special called meeting Tuesday morning.

The board hired Carol Halkias as the Spanish teacher at Demopolis High School, approved Jillian Arthur for the assistant band director supplement, approved Tim Jordan for the ROTC supplement and hired Kimberly McCrory as the Special Education Teacher at U.S. Jones Elementary School.

Other actions included alterations to the Geothermal Project at Demopolis High School.

“Instead of having a valve box at the end of every loop field, and there are over 70 of them, you’re going to have one large valve box for all valves,” Demopolis City Schools Superintendent Dr. Al Griffin said. “It will actually, from a maintenance and monitoring standpoint, having them all in one location will be better off for us.”

The alterations to the project will help save the school system a significant amount.

“We went from $400,000 over budget to $100,000 under budget with only one component of the project left,” Griffin said of a series of project alterations that have provided significant cost cuts for the project.

The Geothermal Project includes the installation new HVAC equipment in classroom at DHS in addition to the placing of sensors in each classroom that will monitor temperature and lighting.

“The way education has been trimmed over the last several years, we’ve had to be creative on ways we can save money in order to keep the local teaching units we have,” Griffin said.