News

Westhope school sees delays in its renovation project

By Scott Wagar

08/26/2014

With the new school year on its way in the Westhope School District, students and staff returning to school should have seen some changes in the school when it came to the district’s plan to start its first phase of renovations and additions to the school.

However, due to complications over the summer, no work was conducted on the school over the summer months; but, if the school board can work out some issues the students and staff should start seeing some changes in the near future.

“In our first phase, we were going to change out our boiler from coal fired to duel fuel like electric with like a propane back-up,” said John Gruenberg, superintendent of the Westhope School District.

“But, when the bids came in a couple of months ago they were 35 to 40 percent higher than what they estimated.”

With the bids over budget, the school district has decided to re-bid the whole project as one construction phase, but when the bids came in Aug. 5 the bids were still too high.

“So, we are currently re-drawing everything,” Gruenberg said. “After Labor Day, our school board is going to meet and then go through what those costs are and then try to make some decision then.

“The reason we haven’t is really a combination of making sure we are fiscal responsible with our budget. On top of that, with it being so late in the year now we are worried that if something went wrong, and we didn’t have a heat system, and we had a cold October, we wouldn’t have heat in the school.”

The goal of the district is to start work on the heating system in April if it was a warm spring so they can shut down the boiler and begin the work.

As for the new additions, which will hold two classrooms, kitchen-commons area, Gruenberg stated they plan to start laying down the footings in October.

The community gym that was to be constructed is still part of the district’s plan. With the high costs that have come in, the district considered removing the plan for the gym. But, this past spring, the trades’ class, along with local contractors, constructed a new shop on the school’s ground. With the shop in place, the school is considering placing the gym in a portion of the shop to be utilized at a much lower cost.    

Even though the school district is behind schedule, they believe they can keep the same completion date of August of 2015.