The Oxford School District’s plan to offer career and technical education (CTE) courses on their campuses next fall took a big step forward this week.

During their regular monthly meeting on Monday, OSD’s Board of Trustees approved a request to advertise for bids towards the construction of a CTE building. The building will be located on Oxford High School’s campus, and superintendent Brian Harvey told the Board the project is expected to be completed by next August or September.

This is the next step in OSD working toward offering its own CTE courses to students without having to transport them to the current Oxford Lafayette School of Applied Technology. The current OLSAT agreement between OSD and Lafayette County School District ends June 30, 2023. The current consortium between OSD and LCSD was dissolved on June 3 of this year, eliminating a joint board that governed ‘The Tech.’

Despite constructing their own building, Harvey said they still intend to use their allotted space at The Tech. Both districts own half of the property and the buildings located on it, though a key issue in the year-long negotiations for a new agreement was how both districts would divide the space between them.

“That’s something that we’ve got to work out,” Harvey said. “I don’t know what that will look like. We still own half the building. We can’t tell you which half, but we still own half. We will continue to send kids who want to go out there with the programs that they have. But, we’ll have (CTE courses) on our campus, which I think will help.”

Courses expected to be offered at the new building are construction, electrical and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC).

The cost of the new CTE building is approximately $3.1 to 3.2 million, which is down roughly $400,000 after the building was relocated from its originally-planned location after it was discovered $400,00 to 450,000 was going to have to be spent to relocate central water lines and heating and cooling lines. The location of the new building will be on the northwest corner of the OHS campus.

The Board approved a resolution declaring the need to lease school facilities, which will fund the project. According to the resolution, the lease project is anticipated to produce proceeds in the estimated amount of up to $3.5 million.