NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Hutchinson USD 308 Board of Education will pursue a $110 million bond issue after the facilities committee presented to them on Monday night.
"We had 20 plus different versions of this master plan a year ago at this point," said Kari Mailloux with the Facilities Steering Committee. "Lots of different scenarios, depending on which lever we leaned into, where we wanted to focus our priorities and our recommendations, and over the process of this last year have really narrowed that down.
We centered in on what is the experience for kids entering the school district at three and four years old? What is that transition like into the district and then into kindergarten? And then the other pivotal transition point into middle school, through middle school, and into high school. We are all very proud of the experience our students have at Hutchinson High School. That is kind of the premier experience. We wanted to make sure that started from the day a child enters into our school district and that the parents have and kind of marshaling their children on this journey through 12 plus years in the district. This version of the master plan that we're bringing to you today is informed by all of that.
Every time we got to a decision point, kind of a recommendation point, we would say, okay, does this align with our values that we stated at the beginning? Does this align with what we're hearing from the community, with what we're hearing from the buildings, the staff, and the faculty that we're talking to?
Since we last came to you in May, and when you said we would consider up to $110 million bond to support the facility master plan implementation, again, we worked back from that. There were two small subcommittees, task forces that worked on those two transition points. If we lean into early childhood, we lean into middle school, what would we create together? What would we recommend that we create together to create that experience that would align with the full experience in the district?
You all have taken action on a new daycare on your own in the last few months. That is not a part of this master plan. It is part of the future, but not this master plan recommendation."
The buildings the district has will be repurposed, in addition to building a new middle school.
"We centered in on HMS 8 as a prime location for putting Pre-K on the main floor," Mailloux said. "We saw in the community surveys a lot of support for our existing elementary schools. We have six elementary schools. Not all of them have the same amenities and capacity, however. In the last bond issue, some of them got upgrades to add second gyms, cafeterias, safe rooms for tornado warnings. Not all of the elementary schools have that. Also, in the last bond issue that I might be correct on this, the HVAC systems are replaced, and they're coming due. This is a maintenance issue, again, could be dealt with over time through capital outlay, but this is an opportunity to really ensure the safety and security and the maintenance of all of our elementary schools, going to keep them up to date and on par and the most safe for our families, and potentially for our neighborhoods. These are neighborhood schools, and they could be assets even more so for the they reside in.
"One of our main recommendations is to combine sixth through eighth grades into one new central middle school. We talked a lot through this process about how amazing Hutchinson High School is, and the campus around it, and all of the amenities. And we thought, how could we create even better, more access to those amenities at the high school, if we had a centralized middle school as well? And if we could eliminate those transitions from sixth to eighth, from sixth to seventh, from seventh to eighth, from eighth to ninth, that all students have been going through for the last 20 years? How do we create a more relationship-centered experience for kids and families in a sixth through eighth middle school?
"Kind of a technicality of offlining the two existing middle schools would be, we need a new production kitchen at that new facility, which would serve the middle school and three elementary schools every day. As Dr. Johnson said, we would not be touching the high school with this master plan.
"The district owns the land that is currently the site of soccer fields and the baseball fields at 23rd and Severance. That land has enough acreage space potential to put the new sixth through eighth middle school, and it's also within close proximity to the high school. We do need to find a new location for the soccer field. And the potential there is to, again, really build on the assets that already exist at Don Michael Field. So this proposal has adding one turf field at Don Michael Field, increasing parking capacity, improving some of the fan experience there, and really making it even more of a hub for sports for the district.
"Alternative learning would be at Avenue A Elementary, so we'd keep that building. Virtual school would go over to Hutch High Bowtech building. The potential here is Jordan spoke to community partnerships and those partners being at the table through this process, but also thinking about what would these moves with facilities, how could they benefit even more partners and more students, more families in the city?Boys and Girls Club could use Lincoln Elementary as their site.
"The other opportunity with HMS 8 being a four-story building is there's lots of potential there to repurpose multiple floors. Again, a pre-K for three- to five-year-old regulations has to be on the main floor. We could repurpose the upper floors for student services. And then we would keep the Naval building and have those ESC, TSC, and information tech in the Naval building.
"The buildings that this would also affect that I didn't mention, we see potential for HMS 7 to be sold. That is a prime location in downtown Hutchinson. There's a lot of energy going into downtown Hutch right now. There's a downtown master plan and lots of potential investors. So we feel like there is likely to be a strong partner willing to invest in HMS 7 building as a site for redevelopment. We also see potential to sell Grandview, which is on East 4th. That has not been an elementary school for many years and it's currently being used, I think, for just wrestling. So there's potential there. Midtown, that was a pretty recent acquisition of land and facility for the district. Again, to downtown momentum, there's potential there to sell that. And the administration building, this building, could also have another community partner interested in it. And there's potential to move administration over to HMS 8 along with those other services. All of that together, again, we're sure to get under the $110 million mark. And so we did that at $109,530,000."
Superintendent Dr. Dawn Johnson wanted to make clear that this is actually a slightly reduced scope from the initial thoughts of the committee.
"They took the survey and the momentum above 65%, that's where that amount per $100,000, that's how it came out to what does that equate to, that's the $110 million," Johnson said. "That's when I think back in May, the board said, sure, continue to look at projects. We don't want to go above, that's where the threshold is for the community to say that they really support it, we don't want to go above that.
"That is not to say that we looked out there and said, well, let's find $109 million worth of projects. Because I really think what was asked for was probably around $117 million. And so they did not put in a competition middle school football field. We're still going to transport kids where we've always been transporting. They're not going to get that, that probably cuts out a couple million.
"I have a correction up there, the pre-K is 16 rooms, not ten, but we're also going to keep Shirley J. Hutcherson open. And so we're not creating, we're still going to have two spaces for early childhood. The cost was not, the threshold for the cost was not there to put all of those students into one building. We can't get them all into HMS-8 and building a brand new building, you know, wasn't possible. So remodeling cut down those costs of that.
"We currently cook at the high school and the two middle schools. If the two middle schools are going to go away, where are we going to cook? You can see the adding of a three elementary plus one middle school for $1.9 million at the middle school. But that's not everything. So we're still going to have to cook at HMS-8. We'll still have three middle school production kitchens that will come out of HMS-8. So we saved another $2 million there."
The timeline between now and the special bond election is below.
The Board approved the plan unanimously.