09/08/2023
A Better Utica, Together. 🍀
It has been almost two years since our community elected that I serve on the North Fork Local school board. I have pledged to do my very best to improve our schools. As I review your list of ideas for improving (Remember those sparks?)we are progressing down the list and constantly adding new things to the want/need list. We are ever nearing our goals and I will continue to relentlessly bring up the issues.
I wholeheartedly believe we are well and completely past the life of our current middle school. The building is very costly to maintain, difficult to heat, and provides a severely inadequate learning environment for our children. When it rains, our maintenance crew works nonstop to protect our heating controls by pumping the water out of the building. After you sweep the gymnasium, a white powder scatters from the ceiling and makes the floor slippery let alone the health concerns of breathing the material. The building lacks the needed technology in our classrooms due to limits of the building space. The only building that closed for COVID after the initial reopening was the middle school! I suspect likely due to lack of ventilation and sadly resulted in many students and staff getting sick. There is NO air conditioning in the building and with poor ventilation, the staff and students with respiratory concerns suffer during times of illness. The outside of the building is in poor condition. I am positive if you ask any student, teacher, staff member, involved parent or visitor to our school that they can include deficits and concerns that they have witnessed or experienced in our Utica Middle School. Our Utica Middle School facility does not keep up with the standards of our elementary buildings or high school. Our kids should be proud and enthusiastic to walk into a setting where learning is comfortable and safe. OUR children deserve, desperately need, so much better! These conditions should have been addressed years ago, but weren’t….so now it is up to US and we MUST address it.
For over a year, we have had multiple public meetings to craft as a community the perfect solution. We looked at remodeling and that was going to be too costly due to the severity and mass of the problems with the building. These meetings consisted of in depth talks about student safety, the facility needs for special education, the wants and needs of the performing arts, the wants of our Redskin athletic teams, and the growing needs for career tech and agricultural education learning labs and classrooms. The first meeting, the Architect presented a design…and almost the whole room agreed his design was nothing like what our community needed. He left the room defeated, but…..LISTENED to what YOU brought up at these meetings AND came back with “our perfect community school”.
The original design was a building with multiple areas of green space and wings that would be built over the current site. Very nice design perhaps….but not OURS.
First, we all talked about wanting to do our best to minimally affect students during the building process. It was decided we wanted the middle school to be built out from the front of the current high school offices so we would not have a need to move students into portable buildings and disrupt education. The new middle school will be built along Jefferson and match up with the current cafeteria (BONUS…only one kitchen saves us building costs).
Next, a state of the art auditorium would be constructed to facilitate so much better than ever performing arts concerts, plays, student award events, community programs, banquets, graduation, and student events. (Spark!)
To follow, and updated high school gymnasium with all new locker rooms would be constructed and HVAC would be added to the old gymnasium (which would become the middle school gym). We would no longer be the only gymnasium without AC! Some Redskin Pride for sure!
And finally, the old middle school would be replaced with additional parking next to the football stadium and track and updated classrooms and labs to aid our Career Tech and Agricultural Science programs. The building design would be simple, yet sturdy and provide many years of a thriving environment for our children. The building plan would “be Utica”. It will be what we wanted and exactly what our children need.
We had many tough conversations to get to the building within our budget. This is far from a middle school project alone and much more of a whole community project that gets our children the facility that will provide an appropriate environment for success….new middle school, new career tech and ag education labs, new auditorium, new gymnasium. This is no longer a want, but a definite and desperate need for our community. There were many times I returned home from these meetings and prayed as I was told there was “NO WAY” we could get all of the needs of the district. Due to the constant rise in material costs along with inflation, the building project costs are projected to rise by 3-5 million dollars per year. WE CANNOT WAIT! Meanwhile we have more children and staff suffering from this inappropriate learning environment. No, we cannot wait! We have worked hard to keep the cost of the project as affordable as possible at 6.8 mills with a 2.2 mills expiring in 2026. That will bring the taxpayer cost at 4.6 mills. I truly hope every taxpayer can understand the need and the value that this building will have for our district. Ask your students, your neighbor kids, your grandkids……we cannot afford to wait for their sake!
In my job as a veterinarian, I have consulted with many farmers as we design and construct animal production buildings that allow our farm animals to grow efficiently and quickly and thrive. It always amazes everyone involved how changing the physical environment can result is such improved success…and it becomes a sometime subtle investment with an easy payoff. I firmly believe that education is no different. Imagine how much more success our children will have in a building with appropriate lighting, ventilation that reduces illness, more technology and career tools, appropriate temperature control, and a better way to allow special needs children to adapt. Imagine our school that has an auditorium for concerts, award ceremonies, graduation, and community events. Imagine a gymnasium that with AC and new equipment for all the indoor sports with new locker rooms. Renewed Redskin pride! Imagine a building that allows for our rapidly growing agricultural education and career tech students to have the necessary tools to put them ahead in this growing area of our community. Can you see it? I can. We can build a better Utica together…and this project is a huge part of it.🍀
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