With construction already underway on a $2.289 million addition to the West Liberty Middle School, the West Liberty School District may be eyeing an update in their Building Plan established in 2017.
With substantial cost savings thanks to competitive construction cost bidding from 13 contractors, the district may look at updating the plan that calls for a classroom addition to the north of the West Liberty Elementary School.
With the middle school upgrade, fifth grade students (present fourth graders) presently enrolled at the elementary school will be moved to the middle school, changing it from a three class building to four classes.
Dr. Diego Giraldo, superintendent for the district, believes that will be a good thing for those students in bringing them into the middle school phase at an early age to get a different type of education experience than they would receive at the elementary school.
“It should help them develop quicker,” he said, noting the education they will receive will be in a different format, but opportunities for more extra-curricular activities will be compounded. Students in the elementary school remain in the classroom to be taught while middle school students move from classroom to classroom.
The move of the approximately 85 member class to the middle school creates more room in the elementary, but not enough to add an estimated 180 preschool and kindergarten students that were expected to move into the elementary school by 2024 upon completion of a classroom addition. Giraldo said he wasn’t sure how many classrooms might be added, but said the plan, developed before he came to town at the beginning of the 2019-20 school year, calls for four classrooms.
That addition would give the elementary school enough room to add the preschool and kindergarten students, eliminating the Early Learning Center.
Dr. Giraldo said plans for that addition likely will start at the beginning of the next school year as the middle school addition is completed – expected by August, 2021.
As the district did with middle school and fifth grade staff members, discussions on creating education in a P-4 elementary school will begin.
“We’ll start planning for those kids to make the move and how that would work,” said Giraldo, noting teachers, administrators and parents will be involved, pointing out it won’t be an easy transition.
In the original district building plans, officials called for a remodel of the aging Early Learning Center on the corner of Seventh Street and North Park Street, but Giraldo said the building needs more work than the district is willing to put into it, likely offering the building for sale sometime after the 2024 move.
He said COVID-19 has helped the district because of the competitive bidding on the WLHS building, saving the district approximately $1.5 million while the board bonded for nearly $5 million in total costs.
He said the elementary school addition will be a process, but points out the district learned from the middle school expansion meetings and said the process should go easier.
The middle school addition includes a total of eight classrooms including two science rooms, four large classrooms, two smaller classrooms, restrooms, an outdoor education/recreation courtyard area, a new band room (being created from a former maintenance garage), new gymnasium flooring, roofing work and more, including enhancements to the outside of the building, initially constructed in 2009 in remodeling/demolishing the former high school.
Giraldo said initial plans also called for razing the former bus barn, which was moved to a new $1.532 million building in Liberty Park on the southeast edge of the community. Maintenance personnel were also moved to the new building to create the space needed to move the middle school band room.
The superintendent says the plan to raze that building located across the alley north of the middle school, however, is on hold, pointing out he’s not sure what the district will do with that building, although it will be used by construction crews during the WLMS addition work.