A new hospital and new schools will keep Iola alive, Deanne Burris said Monday night.
Burris and other USD 257 board members looked again at physical improvements for the district during a planning session.
A new campus embracing all district schools was proposed in 2008. As the economy flagged the price tag of more than $100 million that would have been retired mainly with property tax assessments gave board members and administrators pause, which led them to put plans aside.
They were not revived altogether Monday night, but consideration of some improvements surfaced.
“A lot of people tell me they are in favor of a new elementary school,” said Darrell Catron, but are not receptive to discussions about new middle and high schools. “They look on them as being newer because of the remodeling,” done at the high school 20 years ago and the middle school a few years later.
“You walk into the high school and see the newest part,” the commons area, gymnasium and offices, Burris said. “You don’t see water running into the basement.”
“The high school was remodeled 20 years ago but it was an 80-year-old building then,” said David Grover, IHS principal.
Grover noted that some athletic facilities in the high school, particularly locker and weight rooms, are inadequate, “what you’d expect to see in a 1 or 2A school, not a 4A school.”
BURRIS asked each principal about their buildings’ needs:
Larry Hart, Lincoln Elementary, said storage was a constant need and that lockers for students to stow their books and personal items would be helpful. Closets now used have fallen on hard times and aren’t spacious enough. Exterior doors are an issue and the gym floor has places where it has buckled and even has some rot.
Lori Maxwell, McKinley Elementary, said the stage curtain in the gymnasium was split and “we have to use paper clips to hold it together.” Storage also is a problem and the computer room is woefully small.
Brad Crusinbery, Jefferson Elementary, mentioned storage and the disadvantage of using former closets for instructional areas. The technology room is in “an old shower room and we, too, have problems with doors.”
Grover, at IHS, said antiquated science labs, in the separate building east of Cottonwood Street, didn’t provide a good learning environment and that his ongoing fear was that that and other structural deficiencies would erode efforts to provide cutting edge education. “I often marvel at what we are able to accomplish. Our teachers are very resourceful.”
Jack Stanley, middle school principal, said climate control was an everyday concern, with systems controlled elsewhere by computer sometimes resulting in heat pouring into rooms when it should be cool air, and vice versa in the winter. “We have mold in the basement, which means we’re going to have to move things (mainly athletic equipment) elsewhere. We’re also limited in what we can do with one gymnasium. It would be nice to build a second one” on the east side of the school grounds. Infrastructure to support technology also is lacking.
“Could we find storage somewhere else for immediate needs,” asked Burris. “Can we look for a facility?”
“Yes,” said Dr. Craig Neuenswander, superintendent of schools, without going into detail.
Any significant physical improvement likely would require a bond issue, which would be retired by a property tax assessment.
Board members said they were not eager to grapple with that issue, in part not to divert attention from efforts to finance construction of a new hospital through a countywide quarter-cent sales tax. All who spoke agreed a new hospital was important to the future of all in the county.
Several also mentioned that it needed to be made clear to voters that hospital financing would not involve property taxes, rather the quarter-cent countywide tax plus up to $350,000 Iola has promised from revenue already being generated by a half-cent sales tax.
NEUENSWANDER reminded board members that student needs and learning were the district’s mission.
He said there had been less discussion in academic circles about the No Child Left Behind Act, which expires in 2014, and more attention given to making students career and college ready when they were graduated from high school.
“That’s going to be the phrase for education the next few years,” including from the federal level, he said.
Gail Dunbar, curriculum director, said emphasis was being placed on enrichment for local students, as well as pulling up those who were lagging behind.
