Hitchcock County school board seeks input on buildings

Friday, March 19, 2010

Hitchcock County Schools board of education members want to create an advisory committee to include school district patrons in decisions regarding school facilities in Culbertson and Trenton.

The Hitchcock County News reports that during a board meeting on March 8, representatives of an architectural firm presented preliminary estimates to repair and renovate existing buildings and to build a new facility at a cost of up to $21 million.

Trenton building

The News story indicates that mechanical, electrical and plumbing improvements, heating and cooling upgrades, and new sprinkler system, elevator, restroom modifications and windows would cost $786,000 in Trenton's south building and $1,770,000 in the north building.

Culbertson building

The Culbertson plan of upgrades and improvements also includes a new cafeteria addition and widening the driveway to the gym, at a cost of $2,666,000.

Demolition,replacement

Another idea is tearing down the existing Culbertson building, except the gym addition, and rebuilding new: Single story, $5.4 million; Double story, $7.5 million.

In Trenton, demolishing the north building and replacing it with new would cost $2.9 million.

All new

The architect told board members that a new building could be built in either town at a cost of $18 million.

A school outside of town would cost about $21 million.

Letters have been sent to community members asking for their input on the advisory committee. A public meeting will be scheduled to allow all residents to express their opinions.

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  • Let's include two struggling neighboring school districts as well. This would be a long term solution to provide the most efficient education to our children. Short of doing that, would be a waste of taxpayers money.

    -- Posted by Hugh Jassle on Fri, Mar 19, 2010, at 1:46 PM
  • which neighboring districts are you thinking of Chunky Peanut Butter?

    -- Posted by hccardsfan on Fri, Mar 19, 2010, at 3:10 PM
  • hccardsfan,

    Looking at your handle, at least one district has been identified, the other lies to the south and west.

    -- Posted by Hugh Jassle on Fri, Mar 19, 2010, at 3:43 PM
  • It's not just the Hayes County, Hitchcock County, and Wauneta-Palisade. It's Southwest, Cambridge, Arapahoe, Maywood, and Medicine Valley. These schools are all dropping in numbers, and how is a new or remodeled school going to solve a pressing problem? They cannot compete with the larger consolidated schools. These schools are not competing in the academic areas, let alone in athletics, they are just superior all the way around.

    No body wants to think long term, 20 years or more down the road. Everyone is still hoping the population trends will magically turn around and all will be good. Consolidate the small schools now.

    -- Posted by Hugh Jassle on Fri, Mar 19, 2010, at 6:26 PM
  • Actually Chunky Peanut Butter, Hitchcock County's numbers a growing. They are the only school in the area that is increasing in population over the next 20 years.

    -- Posted by tineslk on Sat, Mar 20, 2010, at 6:03 AM
  • tineslk,

    That may in fact be the case, but, that increase in enrollment you are seeing is from a transient population. Most the those incoming families stay for a few months to a few years at best.

    This is a result of inexpensive housing available in the Hitchcock County school district. A family moves in, realizes there are very few good paying jobs, then moves out, only to be replaced by another family looking for cheap housing and possible employment. And the cycle continues. This is not a realistic and stable projection.

    -- Posted by Hugh Jassle on Sat, Mar 20, 2010, at 12:00 PM
  • That may be true also, but for the past two years, one to three of the elementary classes have been split into two classes because of the number of students.

    So if Hitchcock builds a new school or upgrades their current buildings, perhaps some of the students from those "two struggling neighboring school districts" could attend school there.

    -- Posted by tineslk on Sat, Mar 20, 2010, at 4:21 PM
  • You are right about small town/ selling out like Indianola did to RedWillow school district and sided with bartley after they rejected cambridge's great offer and now southwest high and cambridge 7 miles apart????

    The Indianola location was superior to build new school for all students in district but choose to ship kids to far east location at bartley and lost all mccooks overflow and a lot of Redwillow kids shifted to mccook schools but now new building in bartley and today already much lower grade school enrollments already questions about how long southwest can last? Like one former mccook school board member told me said you folks within 20- 40 miles of mccook will all be in mccook schools someday and you should stop building all those new school building because grain storage can be built cheaper vs using empty gyms .........?? He was right on that one in my opinion

    -- Posted by Cornwhisperer on Mon, Mar 22, 2010, at 2:49 PM
  • Jlake, I agree, sooner or later most of the area schools will be sending their kids to McCook, at least for Junior/Senior High. Until then the area towns will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to save their schools.

    -- Posted by dennis on Mon, Mar 22, 2010, at 3:29 PM
  • Let's be real, McCook itself cannot handle an influx of students from the neighboring districts, its buildings are in a dilapidated condition. Perhaps money would be best spent on a new regional school in McCook.

    -- Posted by Hugh Jassle on Thu, Mar 25, 2010, at 4:37 PM
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