Sparta School pod option is dropped

The Alleghany Board of Education has opted not to go for use of podular units in the school system, County Manager Don Adams announced to members of the Alleghany County Board of Commissioners during its Nov. 21 morning meeting.

Pod units are semi-permanent construction, which may be viewed as a mixture between a mobile unit and a permanent structure. The pod units are also removable.

“The board of education and (Superintendent Jeff) Cox have basically decided to recommend they are not worth looking at,” Adams said. “He did not want to waste a field trip or waste our time.”

Adams said he thought the majority of the discussion for the previously scheduled Nov. 28 joint meeting would have surrounded the ‘pod’ units. Cox commented on his change of opinion in a phone interview.

“The company I was talking with and negotiating with (Modular Technologies, based in Kinston) has something that might be a little less expensive than the $2 million price tag we had with the current plans,” Cox explained. “I sent the engineer of the company a copy the building specifications and after he examined them and talked with me about the standards for a quality building that both our board and the board of commissioners had in mind, he didn’t feel like they could build the building up to that level of quality for a price that would wind up being a real savings for us.”

Cox continued, commenting the owner of the business wanted to work with the board of education on the project, “but the engineer found it was not possible to meet the high quality standards we were demanding. Essentially, it was going to be one last effort to try to get the costs of the building down without sacrificing the quality more than what would be reasonable.”

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