(Spirit Lake)– The Spirit Lake Community Schools will offer tours this (Wed.) afternoon to give the public a firsthand opportunity to view the district’s facilities and needs. The tours will begin at 3:30 pm. Those wishing to participate should show up at the office of the building they would like to tour.
The tours will be followed by a question and answer session at 4:30 pm at the Sami Center. A special meeting of the school board will follow that at 5:30 pm, also at the Sami Center. Superintendent Dr. David Smith says their intent is to be as transparent as much as possible with district patrons…
“We just think we can do some things better but of course that takes money and we don’t have money laying around for that, it would take taxpayer’s approval. And that’s what the board is doing a great job of is trying to gather input from people. I know they’ve received a lot of communications from the community and from our staff and others. So we just continue to try to come up with better plans and better numbers, better budget projections on what this project will cost.”
The current plans includes renovations and new construction at the high school and elementary along with improvements at the middle school; construction of an additional bus barn; replacement of field turf at the football field and new lights at the baseball and softball fields. The cost of the combined projects has been put at about $63 million.
The school board will likely decide at this (Wed.) evening’s meeting whether or not to proceed with all or some of those projects. They must have that finalized no later than August 26th in order to place it on the November 3rd ballot.
Dr. Smith told KUOO news earlier this week he’s going to recommend the school board drop plans for a proposed field house, or sports “bubble”, which would have added about another $13 million onto the project
