The Troy Board of Education has finalized its five-year capital plan, which Superintendent Lee Hicks described as a “wish list” for the school system.

“It’s a fluid document,” Hicks said. “We’re not bound by the items we put down. You can put anything on there that you see any vision for fin the future; you go ahead and put it on the capital plan because it has to be approved by the Legislature.”

Approving the plan was the only item on the agenda for the board’s meeting Monday with personnel for the school system being filled within days of the school year starting back.

Hicks said the list is not just about getting potential capital projects pre-approved– it’s also about signaling needs to lawmakers in the State House.

“When legislators are making plans, they can see what are the needs in their systems,” Hicks said. “But we’re not bound to have to build these things. And we can add things. If we decided we wanted to build a STEM academy, for example, all we would have to do is go onto the website, put in a rough estimate and hit submit again.”

The state requires school boards to submit a full five-year plan Hicks said, so the board puts on whatever potential projects they can think of and stagger them over the five-year period to complete the document.

“You can’t have it out to just four years, it has to be five,” Hicks said. “So next year I’ll have to add on something for 2023.”

Hicks said many of the things on the lists are wants and wishes and are not necessarily priorities.

“One of the items in there is to build new bleachers at the middle school field and to encase that whole storm drain in a big concrete flume to put in a parking lot or a new field,” Hicks said. “That would not be our top priority if I was given $10 million today, but it’s good to have it on the list.”

Hicks said it’s important to be planning some capital projects far in advance as some of the expenses are cyclical and need to be prepared for.

“Asphalt is something that only lasts up to about 15 years and that’s if you’re not driving on it every day,” Hicks said. “So the parking lot might not be in the shape where we need to go out and resurface it today, but in 5 or 10 years, it will be; we want to go ahead and start working toward that now so we can be ready.”