LETTER: School upgrade plan had good and bad ideas

From John Korngiebel
Hutchinson
I would like to provide the District 423 School Board the take I have on the failed bond issue and the proposed plan.

There were some very good parts to the proposal.
1) The auditorium renovation and foyer addition at $1.8 million.

2) The new gym and ancillary facilities at $4.8 million.

3) New football stadium, track, ball fields and site improvements at $3 million.

The reason I feel that the proposal failed is that $59.8 million is too expensive in any economy.

Having said that, where is the expense in this proposal?
It is the $27.1 million price tag to tear down the east and west classroom wings and replace them with an all new all-story classroom building.

The arguments that I hear for doing this are:
1) The present building is too spread out for the students to navigate.

My response would be that this would be a walk in the park compared to when these students reach a typical college campus.

2) There are heating ventilating and fire sprinkling problems in the high school. I agree and I feel the voters would understand this, but this can be handled with creative engineering without having to build a whole building. Granted, an addition may be needed and of course the necessary mechanical improvements would cost something, but not $27.1 million.

The high school is a very substantial building with a reinforced concrete structure and roof and is worth saving.

Another cost-saving option would be to keep the north addition to Park and not to have to build another elementary. Mechanical upgrades would be needed, which again can be implemented by good engineering.

This last proposal was designed by a committee with good intentions, I am sure, but I again recommend to the board that they engage professional help for planning and engineering to come up with a sensible proposal to present to the voters.

Finally, I feel that the two-part vote was somewhat divisive and confusing to some voters. Please do not insult the voters by presenting the same proposal to them next time around.