As the calendar page turns to January, Coweta County School System director of operations Doug Bennett is a worried man.

Bennett has just survived opening a new middle school in Madras an a new elementary school on Poplar Road in August.

Now, he gets to repeat the process next August when the system opens a new middle school on Smokey Road and a new elementary school at Arbor Springs in the northern part of the county.

Right now, the contractors are on schedule and everything looks good for the opening.

But Bennett has been involved in school construction too long not to know what can happen to projects during the winter months.

"January, February and March are the really critical months for bad weather. By March 1, I should have a better idea if anything has fallen off schedule," he said.

The county is experiencing a period of explosive growth and is struggling to keep up with school construction to meet the needs of the new residents. Residents earlier approved a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax to help fund the new schools and upgrade some of the county's older schools.

While December has proven to be a wet month, Bennett said the contractors have still maintained their schedule by doing some interior work when the weather turns nasty.

But a prolonged rainy spell could throw the construction schedule out of work and coming up with an other alternative to opening the schools in August when Coweta's students go back to school.

Still, Bennett is optimistic. Both contractors building the new school are the same contractors who just finished the schools at Poplar Road and Madras.