Mid-Prairie adapts facility plan

WELLMAN — in the wake of a failed bond referendum, the Mid-Prairie school board gathered Monday night to pick which projects it needed most and which it could afford, discussing options for over an hour out of the longest board meeting in recent memory.

“We’re trying to stay within a budget, it’s an issue we run into,” board President Jeremy Pickard said. “Is it perfect? No, we would need additional resources to do more things. We felt like we were getting things to about 80% of where we need to.”

After much deliberation, the school board settled on a handful of its most-needed projects, which it plans to fund with bonds paid by sales tax revenue after hashing out further details.

The board’s outlined “first priorities” include new classrooms at East Elementary and renovations to the middle school, which total around $9.49 million.

East Elementary Principal Greg Jergens said new classrooms at the building were a must.

“What would make it more ideal (is) classrooms, just regular classrooms,” he said. “If we’re going to get by for now, you get the second grade classroom, you get the kindergarten classrooms.”

While board members acknowledged that so few classrooms was a short term investment, they said it was the best they could do without the bond vote.

“I’d hate to see at the end of a big building project that we still have classes running off of a cart,” board member Jake Snider said. “Think about it, if we’re hiring and we say, ‘Hey, we’re going to offer you a job, but you’re going to teach off a cart and have a cubicle,’ we’re going to lose them to a school with classrooms.”

For the middle school, Principal Rob Hruby said renovations were needed to meet academic needs.

“For a lot of our life skills programs, one of the things they always ask for is the ability to do laundry and be able to cook simple meals,” he said. “By doing this we can give them that space … and they can carry out some of those tasks. It opens up a lot of opportunities.”

The board’s outlined “second priorities,” are all extracurricular, including a new wrestling room, softball lights, and resurfacing the high school track, a set of projects that comes out to around $1.8 million.

“Due to the growth of the program, having girls’ wrestling is needed at the high school,” Pickard said. “It kind of stings to do that wrestling room without the weight room because when you’re there tearing it all up, it probably makes some sense to do it together, but again, you’ve got to figure out how to trim somewhere.”

As the district prepares to finalize building plans, board member Gabrielle Frederick said

“I hope we all keep in mind the things that we’re not doing,” she said. “We’re going to get approached. People are going to wonder why we’re doing this as opposed to this, and I just want to make sure that we have open discussion.”

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