As the Knox Community School Corporation considers future building improvements, school officials are taking a closer look at the corporation’s existing facilities. Back in December, the school board hired architectural firm Schmidt Associates to conduct a facilities study.
Superintendent Dr. William Reichhart says the firm presented its initial findings to the school board Monday. “They had done a study of how we are currently using our facilities, looking at our programming that we are offering to our students, looking at the number of students that we have in each of those programs, and then determining our building usage factors,” Reichhart explains.
The study found that the amount of space in the high school is a pretty close match for the number of students. “However, when you include the welding program and the culinary arts program and the robotics program, they felt that that space should be utilized better-connected to the high school,” Reichhart says, “versus being located over at the middle school.”
On the other hand, Reichhart says the middle school currently has some extra capacity. “So one of their suggestions might be a grade reconfiguration for that building,” he says, “and then at the elementary, they felt that there was a difference in our building between the east side of our campus and the west side of our campus, in terms of facilities and how the upkeep was and the age of those two, east versus west, which we knew already.”
Reichhart explains that the work done up until now is just the first step in the process. Next, Schmidt Associates will study the exterior of the school facilities. “Also, they’re going to be working with EMCOR, who’s already studied our heating and cooling systems within our buildings,” Reichhart says. “They’re going to get some data from them to compile a report, and that will be the next step. And then, from that point, they will begin to formulate recommendations to the board of where they think we ought to go, maybe, in a couple years, as we look at how we might change some things here in Knox.”
The goal is to wait until more of the corporation’s existing debt is paid off before starting any major projects, to avoid impacting tax rates.
