New School Bus Facility to Build in McDonough

Henry County Schools approved construction for a new school bus facility. The new bus garage will be the district’s second such facility.

HCS will build the garage behind Oakland Elementary School in McDonough. Education SPLOST funds are paying for the project.

New School Bus Facility

The school district accepted construction bids for the new bus facility in May 2023. They received two bidders. The school board approved the low bid to MEJA Construction of Peachtree City. Their cost was $19.48 million dollars. MEJA has extensive experience with Henry County Schools having built several schools for the county.

The project will build an all-new bus maintenance facility and parking lot. The maintenance garage will have ten service bays. In addition, there will be an on-site fueling station and bus wash. The fueling station will support natural gas, diesel and propane fueling. Henry County Schools runs buses off each. Finally, the project will renovate the office at the existing transportation facility. It too is located in McDonough.

The school district expects construction to begin as early as next month, July 2023. The estimated completion is in February 2025.

E-SPLOST VI Projects

The new bus garage was the third construction bid approved this spring for education SPLOST projects. The others were electronic message signs at each school and a new admin building. The new message boards are in production. The contractor will install them at schools later this year. Site demo will begin in the next few weeks on the new admin building.

Voters approved the current education SPLOST in March 2021. Projects complete to date include the following:

• Dutchtown High School classroom addition,
• Fairview Elementary School exterior renovations, and
• security access control upgrades.

The new Birch Creek Elementary School is presently under construction. Next on deck will be classroom additions at Dutchtown Middle and Ola Middle Schools. They will begin design work during the 2023–24 school year. Other projects, such as a new STEM high school, are to follow. By 2028, the new classroom projects will add space for 5,000 more students in Henry County Schools.

Featured image shows the new bus facility site plan. Henry County Schools photo.