Renovations on the former Jemison Middle School building next to Jemison High are almost finished.

On Tuesday, work crews carried new student desks into the classrooms and painted window trim on the building’s exterior.

In the last few weeks, crews have installed and waxed new tile floors, painted the building’s interior, attached new classroom doors, affixed new dry-erase and bulletin boards to classroom walls, and installed plumbing and some electrical wiring.

They also removed a board partition dividing the hallway connecting the building to a JHS building in use.

The partition served to block access to the old JMS building as it sat unoccupied for four years when middle school grades 5–7 transferred to a new building across town.

Renovations on the building started in May and are on track to be completed before school starts.

“We’re 99 percent finished,” said Keilan Gore, shop foreman with the Chilton County Schools Maintenance Department, on Tuesday. “Everything is coming along real well. We’re trying to get it finished this week.”

According to Gore, painting the remainder of the exterior trim, completing installation of electrical wiring and the fire alarm system, and picking up garbage in and around the building are the final tasks needing to be done.

Christy Mims, a half-day teacher and half-day assistant principal at JHS, said the building would accommodate two additional eighth grade teacher units plus all of the school’s eighth graders—about 200 are enrolled this year— and without having to separate them from the rest of the student body in a remote building.

“I feel that by having them all in one hallway, it’s going to solve discipline issues that we had,” Mims said. “We were just so spread out as far as student safety and management. Just by having them in this one building, that’s going to cut down on a lot of issues that we had.”

Mims said each classroom would have 30 student desks, a teacher desk and a teacher chair.

“It’s a new facility to us, and we think it’s going to be a great learning environment for the kids,” Mims said. “It’s going to be a great year.”