Dear G-A Families,
I wanted to take a moment to update you on what the bond facilities teams have been up to lately. Since last December, shortly after the successful passage of the Bond, two teams of approximately 12-15 individuals have been meeting and working together to design the future high school athletic field and our Primary School addition, which will include four classrooms, one STEM/STEAM classroom plus a preschool security vestibule.
This process has been a lot of fun, as we dream of what we would love to see be a part of these two projects. TowerPinkster, the Architecture company helping us design the projects, is finishing up taking all of the groups' feedback and drawing the final schematic designs. Those designs will then have costs put to them by Triangle Construction. Each project was given an estimated budget in the original application to the State Treasurer. If the designs come in over cost, we will then be required to determine priorities of what stays and what we cannot afford to do.
The Board will be presented with the final schematic designs of the two projects, athletic field and Primary School, with the costs associated based on the current market, on Monday May 2, at 6:30 p.m., during their Committee of the Whole Meeting. At that point, these two project designs will guide all work going forward.
Projects will go out for bid after the design development phase. We anticipate the athletic facility will go out for bid in late July, and the Primary School will go out in mid September. We will begin soil sampling at both sites soon, and expect to begin breaking ground in October. We are projected to be able to get our 8th graders back to the Middle School by the 2023-2024 school year when we can open up our new 4th grade classrooms. We won't know for a while whether we will be on the new football field in 2023, but we will likely be hosting our first track meets in the spring of 2024!
We recently pulled a group together to begin the schematic design of the high school multipurpose facility. We met once to start dreaming of all the ways we could design this facility and maximize the future usage by various student programs and even community use. Because it will be designed as flexible space, we will be able to accommodate for programs today and the future. More to come as this process moves forward.
We know construction costs will definitely be much higher for these projects today, compared to when we first started on this journey in 2019. However, we feel very confident we will have fantastic facilities when it is all done. I believe these facilities will be a gamechanger for our district, and more families will choose G-A for their children's education.
I look forward to bringing you more updates as the progress on these projects continues.
Wendy Somers