Long-awaited

additions to both McIntosh and Sandy Creek high schools could be put off

another year if the legislature doesn't finalize the fiscal 2004 state

budget within two weeks, the Fayette County school board learned Wednesday.

That was one

of the possibilities spelled out by central office administrators in a

called meeting that lasted more than two hours and accomplished "nothing,"

in the words of board member Janet Smola.

The board has

a two-week "window of opportunity" to start the process of seeking

bidders on the projects or roughly until April 14 because the first phase

at both schools must be completed during summer vacation.

The advertisement

for bids runs four weeks by law, and two more weeks are set aside for

school system staff to review them. Under that timeline, it would be Memorial

Day before contracts could be awarded.

Any delay beyond

that will make it harder to reconstruct the parking areas before students

return in August. If that threat exists, both projects will have to hold

until next year.

The board is

hesitant to begin the bid process until it knows for certain that $6.4

million due the county will be included in the state budget. And with

this week's defeat of Gov. Sonny Perdue's plan to raise the tobacco tax,

all bets are off as to when an agreeable state budget will even come up

for a vote.

Wednesday,

Smola supported going ahead with the advertisements for bids even without

the state funds in hand.

"The money

will be there," said Smola, who along with board member Greg Powers

represents the district on legislative matters. Fayette's delegation at

the Capitol assured her this week that the capital outlay of $6.4 million

would not be slashed from the final spending plan, she said.

But Powers

didn't want to risk the chance that the state wouldn't come through, forcing

the board to pull the plug on both projects after bids had gone out.

"I don't

think we should put out bids when we don't have the money to pay for the

buildings," said Powers. "I know we won't get many low bids

if we make that a practice."

Klaus Darnell,

construction manager for Fayette schools, suggested that the bid process

could be halted if the state money doesn't come through, or the board

could reject all the bids automatically setting the work