Editor’s Note: This is one of a series of stories over the next several days looking back at significant progress in Moultrie and Colquitt County during 2016.

MOULTRIE, Ga. – Much of the results are not likely to be seen for a year or more, but work has already started on Phase II at the new Colquitt County High School.

The school opened at the intersection of Darbyshire Road and Doc Darbyshire Road in August 2015, but additions to the facilities physical education, athletics and special education departments are already under way.

Also started recently are renovation projects at Doerun and Odom elementary schools.

The work at the high school and at the two elementary schools is being funded by money that will be raised through the Special Local Option Sales Tax approved by county voters last March.

Fans of the Colquitt County girls and boys basketball teams who took in recent games at the high school might have noticed site work has begun behind the gymnasium.

A new addition to the school will house football operations, including an 8,000-square-foot weight room that will be available to all students; locker rooms, meeting rooms and offices for all coaches; a training room; the athletic director’s office and a new, more accessible ticket office; a conference room; and four special education classrooms.

Also included will be a kitchen and dining area for athletes.

The addition, which will be attached to the back of the gymnasium, will allow the Colquitt County football program to move from the field house behind the old high school to the new high school, no longer requiring players to travel from one campus to the other for practice or to see the trainer.

The two other projects at the high school also will benefit the Colquitt County football team, which, over the last eight seasons, has reached at least the state semifinals seven times and has played in three state championship games, winning two.

A new $1-million track, with adjacent space for field events, will be built in the area between the current bus parking lot and the tennis courts, just north of the soccer fields.

In addition to enabling Colquitt County to play host to meets in a state-of-the-art complex, the track’s infield will feature a 100-yard lined football field covered with artificial turf that can be used by the football team or by the band for practice sessions.

And in what Colquitt County Superintendent of Schools Doug Howell calls the “crown jewel” of the projects, an indoor multipurpose facility with a 100-yard football field, also is under construction, just north and west of the track.

It is projected to be used not only for practice by the football team, but also by the band, Special Olympics and other sports and perhaps for banquets and other events.

The facility will enable the football team, band or other teams to practice inside when temperatures outside are unsafe or when rain or lightning keep them from going outdoors.

Colquitt County Principal Stephanie Terrell said she envisions the two Special Olympics competitions that Colquitt County plays host to each year being held in the multipurpose facility.

The facility will house no offices, just the 100-yard artificial turf field.

In addition to the indoor multipurpose facility and the infield of the track, both the football team and band also will have access to the third soccer field for practice sessions.

Terrell said she is looking forward to having all the football coaches joining the rest of the faculty on campus and nearly all student-athletes being able to practice at the high school or at Packer Park.

“We’ll have a gym, an auxiliary gym, a track, a multipurpose facility, soccer fields, baseball fields, softball fields and tennis courts,” she said. “Kids won’t have to be bused off campus to practice.”

The three projects, which are being handled by JCI Construction, a Colquitt County firm, will take at least a year to finish.

“This time next year, everything should be finishing up, if everything goes smoothly,” Terrell said.

Two other school system projects have begun.

Doerun Elementary will receive a new kitchen and cafeteria and a new front office complex and each classroom will receive new tile and new paint.

Howell said the project should be completed before students return to school next August.

Odom Elementary will receive a more comprehensive makeover that will not be completed when school starts next year.

Odom was built in 1986 as the first Quality Based Education (QBE) school in Georgia.

Howell said that the school had between 400-450 students when it opened. It now has between 650-700 students.

Odom will get a new gymnasium and the old gymnasium will be renovated and serve as the cafeteria. The former cafeteria will renovated to become the new media center.

The school also will receive a new kitchen.

Also planned are a new entrance and office complex and all classrooms will receive new tile and paint. Some air conditioning and duct work will be completed.

Howell said he expected the work to be completed next fall.

“The next year will be challenging,” Howell said of the construction projects. “There will be some inconvenience. We’ll just have to come to school and work around it.”

Since the new high school was built, the Colquitt County school system’s central office has moved into the 10th-grade wing of the old high school.

The G.E.A.R. (Gifted Education with Academic Rigor) program has moved into the former ninth-grade building and the Achievement Center has relocated to the area that housed the principal’s office and part of the old cafeteria.

The former high school media center is now the board room and the former guidance office now houses the school system’s pre-K center.

Plans are for the remaining part of the old high school, which was opened in 1978, to be torn down.

There is no time frame for demolishing the unused portion of the building, but Howell said he expects it to start some time in 2017. The plans are to turn those areas into green space.

The old gymnasium will remain, although the locker rooms behind it will be torn down.

The Colquitt County wrestling team will continue to use the former ROTC building, located behind the old gymnasium, for practices. Wrestling meets will be held at the new high school. There are no current plans for the wrestling team to practice at the high school, which lacks storage space for mats, Howell said.

Howell said there are plans to use the current field house, which was built in 2007, once all football activities are moved to the new high school.

It has not been decided which departments will occupy the building, but Howell noted that the Program for Exceptional Children is currently housed in the former GTE building across from the old Moultrie Tech building and that network services is still in a building on the former Pineland School campus.

The board of education has sold the Pineland site to the Moultrie YMCA.

Howell indicated a desire to get all school system operations to the old high school site.

“When we get it all done, it will be something the community and the taxpayers will be proud of,” Howell said of the school system projects.