The Barren County Schools board of education approved Thursday several measures involving buses and two construction projects.

The board heard a status update on the project to add six classrooms to Red Cross Elementary School. Craig Thomas of RGB Design, a subcontractor involved in the project that is supposed to be finished by the end of July.

“The construction continues to progress, I believe, on schedule, in a timely manner, despite the weather,” Thomas said.

He also presented the board with a change order for the project, which the board approved. The order included five items, three of which were deductions to the project’s overall price. Two were additions – the creation of eight new parking spaces in front of the building, which is expected to cost around $20,000, and the construction of a stairway leading to the mechanical building, where much of the construction equipment is stored, Thomas said.

The deductions included changes in the electrical work and the omission of roughly $3,000 worth of pavement demolition, he said.

Superintendent Bo Matthews explained that the stairway would provide a more direct entrance to the mechanical room so maintenance and construction workers won’t have to carry materials or equipment through the school. 

“We feel like that’s a wise thing to do and it’s not too late to do it,” he said.

The change order will add roughly $17,600 to the project’s $2.8 million cost, according to Thomas.

The board also approved schematic drawings of a floor plan for the Career and Technical Education facility, the construction of which was approved at the board’s February meeting. Though originally expected to have seven classrooms and four labs, that may change because nothing has been finalized, Matthews said. 

“That work is ongoing. Certainly Craig (Thomas) and his staff are working on CTE facility drawings,” he said. “I’m certain there will still be changes to designs and drawings as we go through the construction process, as there normally is.” 

During the discussion of the CTE, Matthews informed the board of some roof repairs needed at the high school that could be addressed during the construction of the CTE.

The board also approved measures to surplus a bus and a system to monitor behavior on the buses.

Chip Jenkins, Barren County Schools’ director of transportation, said the surplussing will be done through the Kentucky Interlocal School Transportation Association, which would net the district a greater profit than salvaging the bus, which he estimates would probably pay about $50 or $60 a ton.    

Bus Conduct, the approved monitoring system, allows the district to keep track of the behavior of drivers and student passengers with quicker information and with less paperwork, he said. 

“Its a method of tracking discipline write-ups on a timely basis without using a paper trail,” Jenkins said. “We’re trying to get more electronic again with our transportation.”

Doing away with the paper forms the current system uses should outweigh the cost of Bus Conduct, he said.

“It’s $875 a year, but I’ll spend $900 a year on my trip to get forms,” Jenkins said. “I mean, we use a lot of forms to get this to all the schools so this should eliminate that kind of paper trail and save us money.”   

— Follow Daily News reporter Jackson French on Twitter at twitter.com/Jackson_French or visit bgdailynews.com.