(Spirit Lake)– The Spirit Lake School Board voted 5-0 in a special session this (Mon.) afternoon to hire Beck Engineering, Incorporated of Spirit Lake to conduct a review of the district’s facilities.
Superintendent Dr. David Smith tells KUOO news it’s part of a strategic plan the board has put into place and will serve as a follow-up to an internal study done by district personnel…
“We’ve taken a lot of input from staff, from community members and had them walk the building and give us input on what they thought was important for moving forward into the future. We had already identified a bunch of things: HVAC, roof, lights, ceiling, stuff that’s really not that pretty for people to talk about or look at or want to spend money on, but we have some really aging parts of the facility that are just outside of their life expectancy so we’ve kept it all together for a long period of time but now it’s time that we have to take a thorough evaluation and that’s why we hired BEI to come in and do some work for us and give us some more professional cost estimates and designs, etcetera, and then the board can make a decision on what they want to do down the road.”
Dr. Smith says the elementary building will be a key component of the study…
“Look at the size, shape, the lighting, the roof, the HVAC. Almost all of the HVAC has to be replaced at some point in the near future at the elementary. We don’t want to be in the position where we can’t have school, can’t house kids in our buildings because HVAC’s kaput. We want to make sure we’re being proactive as best we can and handle these situations before they arise. We also have our Vo-Tech building which is on our campus but away from the high school building. It would be really nice to have that be a part of our actual building here with the rest of the high school, on top of the fact that we have to completely re-do that building with HVAC, with all the wiring, lights, etcetera. It needs a complete overhaul from top to bottom so that’s going to be a big undertaking as well. But different classrooms throughout the high school, some of the really old classrooms that have been here a long, long, time need some attention desperately, so we’re just trying to do an evaluation to see what really makes sense, see what we can do that makes the most sense to do right now or to push down the road in the future, see what the costs are and what we can afford what we can’t afford. The board just wants more information.”
Dr. Smith says they could have some of that information already in 45 to 60 days.
