Demo, construction bids expected at Sept. 26 meeting

By Shelby Stewart-Soldan
Staff Writer
Oxford Twp. – During its regular meeting on Sept. 12, the Oxford Board of Education received a report from Sam Barna, assistant superintendent of business and operations, about the cabling for the district’s Drahner Road property.
The property, formerly the Dominican Sisters Motherhouse, was purchased in 2021 for $2.5 million, and the district is looking to remodel and upgrade the building to house Oxford Bridges High School, LOFT, Oxford Virtual Academy and the technical department, all for under $5 million.
“We received three quotes and what was in the board packet was the lowest bid, from M-tech, for the cabling, fiber and other network gear that’s necessary for the remodeling of the building,” said Barna. “The other bids came in a little bit higher. This represented about (a) nine-and-a-half percent discount among the three bids.”
The M-Tech bid for the work came in at almost $99,000. This did not include the cost to examine the scope of the work, which was done by Saso Vasovski, the director of Cybersecurity and operation technology for the district.
“This is all the wiring for the building, all the drops, I think in total there’s going to be about 264 CAT6 connections between all the three levels, the basement, the first floor and the second floor,” said Barna. “We are looking to see all the bids that are coming back for the demo and then the remodeling on the 26th of this month, but we decided not to put that in the package because we have the in-house expertise in Saso, and so he was able to gather the quotes after looking at the building needs.”
There is space for expansion included as well, in the event that Oxford Virtual Academy enrollment grows. Funds for the project would come out of the capital project fund, and is estimated to be around $4.2 million. Bids for the project closed on Sept. 18.
“What we want to bring forward to you on the 26th of this month is not only this for approval, but obviously all of the bids for demolition, drywall, plumbing, electrical, you name it,” said Barna. “We chose not to have this put into the bid package, because quite frankly, we didn’t feel like we wanted to pay a fee on top of this. We could do this in-house. With the knowledge Saso has, we were able to extract this piece of technology out of the main bids and not have to pay that fee.”