Dolly Ridge file photo/Vestavia HIlls High photo from Vestavia Hills City Schools
Vestavia Hills Elementary Dolly Ridge, al left, and Vestavia Hills High School.
The Vestavia Hills Board of Education this week approved contracts for more than $5 million worth of capital projects at Vestavia Hills Elementary Dolly Ridge and Vestavia Hills High School.
Vestavia Hills Elementary Dolly Ridge will be getting $4.3 million worth of heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment and roofing work, and Vestavia Hills High School will get a new curtain rigging system for its theater that costs nearly $1 million, officials said.
The HVAC and roofing work at Dolly Ridge will be for Building A, which includes the kindergarten and third grade classrooms, as well as the office and half of the cafeteria, officials said. That’s less than half of the HVAC work that needs to be done at Dolly Ridge, but that’s all the money that is available now, Superintendent Todd Freeman said.
The school system is using energy savings rebates to fund most of that work, but the remaining funds are coming from the state “advancement in technology” money, Freeman said.
The school system since 2020 has spent about $15 million on energy savings projects and still has at least $20 million worth of HVAC work left to do, Freeman said. “We’ve got a long way to go here.”
Freeman said he hopes to bring the school board another contract for some of the needed HVAC work at Vestavia Hills Elementary West later this year, but the money must be identified for it.
School board President Jay Stewart said the school board is committed to getting the HVAC systems updated, but it will have to be done in stages, step by step, due to limited funds.
The new theater curtain rigging system at Vestavia Hills High School is necessary due to safety concerns with the current rigging system, Freeman said. The school board is paying Williford Orman Construction $971,896 to do that job.
That work likely will be done in February and take about a month, Operations Director Ty Arendall said. The goal is to get the work completed before the busy spring theater season, he said.
The school board also on Monday hired Lathan Associates Architects to design bathroom renovations at Vestavia Hills Elementary East and the softball field at Vestavia Hills High School.
Those renovations are expected to cost about $400,000, records show.
The bathroom renovations are the East elementary school likely will take place in the summer of 2026, but the timeline for the bathroom renovations at the softball field has not been determined, Arendall said. The softball bathroom renovations likely will include the installation of two showers in the existing building, Athletics Director Laura Casey said.
In other business Monday, the Vestavia Hills Board of Education:
- Approved a new vape awareness, education and prevention policy that prohibits the possession and use of tobacco, tobacco products, electronic nicotine delivery systems, e-liquids, and alternative nicotine products by students at school and sets up a graduated set of consequences for violating that policy that includes an education component concerning the harmful effects of tobacco and nicotine delivery systems.
- Approved a new pay supplement schedule for athletic coaches and employees who lead in other extracurricular programs and activities.
- Appointed 15 faculty and parents to a social studies textbook review committee. The faculty members are Jupie Lindley (Cahaba Heights), Stacey Anderson and Debbie Bowman (Dolly Ridge), Haley Martin (East), Lainey Graham (Liberty Park Elementary), Jenny Henry (West), Jessica Hall and Heather Cantwell (Liberty Park Middle); Allison Collins (Pizitz Middle), Ben Osborne and Laura Beale (Freshman Campus) and Matthew Cameron (Vestavia Hills High). Parents on the committee are Landon Nast (Dolly Ridge), Holly Stigler (Pizitz Middle) and Lissa Peterson (Vestavia Hills High).
- Approved a license for Brittany Jones Consulting to use the school system’s logos and symbols on various products.
- Hired Emily Erwood to replace Ali Pilcher as the manager of the school system’s 1Legacy community outreach program now that Pilcher has been elected to the Vestavia Hills City Council. Erwood, a Vestavia Hills High School graduate and vice president for fundraising for the PTO at Vestavia Hills Elementary East who also has served as a teacher at Vestavia Hills High School.
- Named new school board member Shelley Gentle as the board’s delegate to the Alabama Association of School Boards this year.
