HCS announces E-SPLOST VI town halls

Aerial photo of McDonough High School with words “E-SPLOST VI” (staff photo)

Henry County Schools announced an upcoming series of E-SPLOST VI virtual town hall meetings. The meetings are before the March 16 referendum.

Education SPLOST VI proposes an extension of the existing local sales tax. The sales tax has been continuously collected since 1998. State law requires local counties to place the item on the ballot every five years. Voters must consider its renewal. Henry County voters last renewed E-SPLOST in spring 2016.

If the March referendum passes, then E-SPLOST VI will collect a one-cent sales tax from January 2023 to December 2027. The current program, E-SPLOST V, ends collections in December 2022. All projects from E-SPLOST V will be complete this summer.

District Town Halls

The district has five virtual town halls planned — one for each district. The virtual meetings will share information about proposed projects and answer questions from the community.

Meetings will focus on schools within the district, but anyone may attend. All meetings start at 6 pm. See below for the meeting dates.

  • District 1 – Tuesday, February 23.
  • District 2 – Monday, February 22.
  • District 3 – Monday, March 1.
  • District 4 – Tuesday, March 2.
  • District 5 – Wednesday, March 3.

Visit the Henry County Schools website to register for each meeting.

E-SPLOST VI Projects

Education SPLOST VI proposes approximately $320 million dollars worth in capital projects. State law requires the district to spend E-SPLOST collections on capital projects only. For example, education SPLOST can build new schools or purchase new school buses. Collections cannot go towards staff salaries or operating costs.

Nearly half of the program budget is planned for school expansion projects. The projects address capacity concerns at specific schools — identified during the district’s recent capacity study. It also removes all classroom trailers presently in use.

School addition projects include the following:

  • New STEM High School
  • Two new Elementary Schools (Willow Lane, McDonough & Wolf Creek, Locust Grove)
  • Six school additions:
    • Dutchtown High School
    • Dutchtown Middle School
    • Ola High School
    • Ola Middle School
    • Locust Grove High School
    • Union Grove Middle School

In addition to the school classroom projects, other projects include:

  • Security Access Control at all schools.
  • Electronic Message Signs at all schools.
  • Technology upgrades, such as replacing student and teacher devices.
  • 125 new school buses and a second bus garage.

For the full project list, visit my posts linked below:

Which district am I in?

The school board districts match the BOC districts. Visit my maps page to see a copy of the districts, but also printed below is a list of school clusters in each district. Some communities are located within more than one district.

District 1

  • Locust Grove
  • Luella
  • McDonough
  • Ola

District 2

  • Dutchtown
  • Hampton
  • Luella

District 3

  • Eagle’s Landing
  • McDonough
  • Ola
  • Union Grove

District 4

  • Dutchtown
  • Eagle’s Landing
  • Stockbridge
  • Union Grove
  • Woodland

District 5

  • Dutchtown
  • Stockbridge
  • Woodland

About Clayton 1739 Articles
Clayton Carte is the founder and owner of The Henry Reporter. He founded the site in 2017 to highlight transportation projects. Over time, he began covering other topics like new development so residents can best know what’s happening in our community.

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