(Milford)– The new Okoboji elementary school remains on track to open in a year from now. Superintendent Will Dible says they’ve already been getting sneak peaks of the new facility as construction continues…
“We toured a lot of groups through there. Actually our board got to look at it at our last board meeting we had a work session after it, they were able to tour it. We had our committee that did our bond issues, our volunteer committee, we toured them just this last week as well. It is coming along extremely nicely and of course a positive for me is it’s coming along in time extremely nicely, so.”
Dible says construction is to the point now to where the weather will no longer pose any obstacles…
“We are what’s considered fully enclosed. Now that doesn’t mean like all the windows are in or anything like that, but it does mean, you know, that the weather is really going to be not so much a factor any more, so that’s always a big step in a construction project. Because once you can kind of discount the weather, you know where it’s going to be too rainy or too wet, then that’s a lot less worry on your timeline and whether or not you’re going to make it on time. We are though in the process of drywalling the inside, so we’re framing, drywalling our classrooms on the inside. We do have all of our utilities are put out in there and putting in the concrete, it’s fully laid on the inside of the building and we’re putting in windows and doors in a lot of our areas and one of the cool things there is that every hallway, like when you get to the end of the hallway, it’s what we call a glass wall. I mean really it’s just lots of panes of windows in there, but it’s an absolutely beautiful exit in every hallway and gives a lot of natural light, so that’s kind of the phase we’re in right now.”
He adds the new facility is being constructed with modern day education needs in mind…
“We have a section wing for each of our grade levels and our elementary is Pre-K through 4th grade, and they’ll kind of blend into different ones. Early childhood is kind of the first corner when you walk in past the office will be for the elementary. We have a bathroom all the way in through first grade in each of the classrooms in addition to the, of course, larger bathrooms for grade levels. We’re going to have high-end projections, interactions. We have calming rooms in every single wing for our students in addition to spacing for like a therapy classroom and such with our special ed, a special ed wing. It’s just going to be a really awesome opportunity for our kids and our community kids to have it, but in addition we also have spaces such as like a large multi-sided stage that’s part of the commons and the gym that we of course want to allow our community to be able to utilize, so as we get that built in there I’m going to encourage community members to look at that for different groups and stuff and reserving so they can use that wonderful space as well, and a competition size gym in there.”
In addition, construction on the second phase of improvements continues at Okoboji High School. Dible says students and teachers are having to make a few changes while work is taking place on the central core of classrooms in the building as well as the media center.
