Douglass High School on schedule to open, running low on construction funds

Douglass High School, built in 1916, has been undergoing renovations since last summer and is on schedule to reopen this fall, but is also running low on money for the project.

“We’ve had a great history of coming on or under our originally set budgets,” Linda Quinley, chief financial officer for Columbia Public Schools, said. “Douglass is going to push it for us.”

The school board set a $4.9 million budget for the project with $360,000 set aside for contingencies and change orders. It has about $60,000 left.

“We’ve had about $300,000 worth of change orders and they range from anything from having the city come in to do inspections and asking us to reroute some plumbing or termite damage under the gym floor that we didn’t expect,” Quinley said.

Quinley said there have been about 19 change orders so far, and the district is comfortable with that number. She said it plans for change orders to come up during the construction process. Quinley also said the district won’t be making any more owner-elective change orders.

“Like we elected to put in a higher grade of science table than originally planned,” Quinley said. “We’re not going to do anymore like that because we want to make sure our $60,000 is going to cover must-dos, like if we discover termites in another area of the building or something like that.”

Quinley said that in her 11 years working for the district, this is the largest project done at Douglass. She said other types of renovations at the school might have been roof renovations and similar projects.