LETTER: Open house will explain new options for schools

From the Hutchinson Board of Education
Julie Ashbaugh, Lenore Flinn, Keith Kamrath, Tim Kerkvliet, Mike McGraw and Brian Pollmann

On Monday, June 9, the Hutchinson Board of Education will conduct an open house to present its facility plans for the Hutchinson School District. The open house will begin immediately following our regularly scheduled board meeting at the Hutchinson City Center from 7 to 8:30 p.m.

With the hindsight of two recent unsuccessful bond referenda, the school board has made a sincere effort to understand and meet the needs of the Hutchinson community. Following the last bond referendum, several community priorities emerged: continue to utilize Park Elementary as a school, a new high school complex is not needed, and the tax impact needs to be more affordable.

A facilities task force, consisting of local facility professionals, staff, administration, and board members, has been working for the past 12 months to develop a long-term facilities solution that meets educational needs of the school district and the community’s expectations. The facilities task force assessed the physical condition of all of our school buildings including physical structure, heating systems, electrical systems, handicap accessibility, student safety, site considerations and fire protection.

In addition to the facilities task force, a second committee was formed to evaluate how well our facilities meet the current and future educational needs of our students. This committee examined how the current educational and activity spaces are designed/equipped and made recommendations to ensure that our facilities support our educational mission. All areas of our curriculum such as science labs, technology, vocational training, agriculture program, and media center capabilities were reviewed. In addition, other areas such as special education, fine arts and athletics were considered.

The culmination of this effort is a facilities solution that, when completed, is expected to meet the needs of Hutchinson students for the next 25 years. It is difficult to give you a good understanding and appreciation of the plan in this writing; that is the purpose of the open house. The plan can basically be described as consisting of two projects: the elementary project and the high school project. The elementary project involves removing the north portion of Park Elementary and relocating two grades to a new classroom structure near West Elementary. This approach preserves the historic portion of Park elementary that most people like about Park. The high school project involves removing the east and west wings of the current high school and constructing a new two-story academic building on the southeast portion of the high school. Additional physical education space will also be added to the high school. The estimated costs are $22 million for the elementary project and $36 million for the high school project.

Before moving forward with a referendum, the board would like your feedback to ensure that we have interpreted your wishes correctly. We invite you to come to the open house to let us know your thoughts.

Quality public schools are at the heart of every great community. Working together as a community we can continue to provide outstanding educational opportunities for our students.