The board of education for South Point Schools held a meeting on Monday to discuss plans for a renovation to the board office building.

The South Point BOE office is currently in the former South Point High School building and the board’s eight members only occupy a small portion of the building’s two floors. The renovations will include downsizing the facility by demolishing part of the old school that is no longer in use.

“We are downsizing to save on the costs of utilities,” Mark Christian, superintendent said. “The current electric bill for the entire building is approximately $140,000 a year not counting other utilities. So it just makes sense for us to do this as a money saver.”

Downsizing the facility will save the district an estimated $92,000 a year and the other renovations will help make the building more energy efficient.

“We are going to be adding energy efficiency lights and things of that nature,” Christian said. “We are going to be doing anything we can to make the building less costly and improve our energy efficiency.”

The BOE had been renting the second floor of the building to Collins Career Center to help offset utility costs, but CCC moved out of the building early this year after its facility was completed at the Getaway campus. The South Point board had considered renting the building to another tenant but determined that would be more costly than the demolition.

“We looked at all of our options,” Christian said. “We appraised the building thinking it may be cheaper to sell the facility and then buy another place for our offices but that would be more expensive. So then we checked into renting it again and we just determined that demolition would be the most cost effective option.”

However, the demolition will not include tearing down the old high school gymnasium because it is used by the village’s youth basketball league and for other events.

“We will keep the gym,” Christian said. “It is still used pretty frequently and we don’t want to take that from the community.”

The demolition is scheduled to begin in the middle of July and be completed during the first week of August. An addition to a bus garage is also currently underway adjacent to the BOE’s office. The garage will be completed one week before the demolition begins.