The opening of the Anna K. Davie Elementary School is still within reach for Rome City Schools, if only a little further away than before.

Rome City Superintendent Gayland Cooper said during the Board of Education meeting Tuesday night that a more realistic time frame for the new school to be finished would be January of 2014, instead of August 2013. There are some real estate issues to sift through first, Cooper said.

“We’re very close now,” he said during a post-meeting interview. “The master appraiser was hired and came in and did an appraisal of the property, and at this point, the city, on behalf of Rome City Schools, will probably have a meeting with the property owners, and if they can reach an agreement, that would be good. If they can’t, the owner has the opportunity to go forward with a court case. So we hope an agreement can be reached, and we can go forward.”

During the meeting Cooper showed a slide depicting the property from a bird’s eye view.

“There is some elevation (on West Glover Street),” Cooper said. “We’re going to have to grade that hill down, and at some point ask the city if they can close West Glover and make West Glover as we know it now into an egress for the new campus.”

Also discussed were the SPLOST receipts for the tax period of Aug. 2012.

“Our actual monthly was $407,217.18,” Cooper said. “We were anticipating $502,729.50, and you do see a shortfall of $95,511.63. And we are still making good progress on our cumulative totals, and we’ll continue to do that as you’ll see.”

Following the meeting, Cooper said the receipts are a reflection of the slow economy. “We will continue with the SPLOST and our funding will continue,” he said. “Each month, I’ll make those collections and my prediction is we’ll get our collections in.”

Cooper said the Anna K. Davie School will still be completed under SPLOST III. “There may be several smaller projects at some schools that we might not be able to complete on SPLOST III, but I believe we’ll certainly get Anna K. Davie and several other projects done on SPLOST III,” he said. “The shortfalls have been coming in, but I still think we’ll get the majority of our work done.”

In other action:

The board recognized that 42 students earned Advanced Placement Scholar Award distinctions for 2012, 19 of which are current students at Rome High School. Sixteen of those students are AP Scholars and three of those students are AP Scholars with Honor.

The board recognized Elm Street Elementary School had the best attendance record for the second month of school at 97.96 percent. Rome Middle School had the best attendance on the secondary level at 97.15 percent and the staff attendance winner was East Central Elementary School at 98.84 percent.

The Board approved to hire Gia Lee Bagwell at West Central Elementary School, Julie R. Clonts at Elm Street Elementary School and Sundy Graha Rebeschke at South East Elementary for the 2012-2013 school year.