Referendum update: construction underway at Colfax Elementary
By LeAnn R. Ralph
COLFAX — The day of the Colfax Board of Education meeting, April 24, marked the 16th day of construction at Colfax Elementary.
The footings and the frost walls have been installed, reported Bill Yingst, district administrator.
The next step will be to start constructing the walls, he said.
In the week following the school board meeting, Yingst e-mailed a series of construction photographs to the Colfax Messenger, and by Friday, walls were, indeed, going up, and spaces for windows were visible.
The new elementary classrooms being built on the north side of the existing elementary school will replace the “temporary” classrooms located directly east of the elementary cafeteria that have been in use for 30 years.
At an approximate cost of $1.5 million, the elementary school project includes a 1,500 square-foot art room, which includes a kiln and storage, and three 1,400 square-foot classrooms.
Although building the new classrooms off the north side of the elementary school takes up some of the existing playground space and resulted in moving part of the playground to the east, putting the new classrooms where the temporary classrooms are now could interfere at some point in the future with a possible high school expansion.
MAKING PROGRESS — Construction is moving along nicely on the new classroom addition located on the north side of Colfax Elementary. By Friday, April 28, cement block walls were to the point where windows were visible. The elementary addition is part of the $7.2 million referendum approved by school district voters last November. —photo courtesy of Bill Yingst, Colfax district administrator.
The new art room and the new classrooms will be about four times the size of the temporary classrooms currently in use.
The temporary classrooms were meant to be used only for a few years, and because of their construction, are difficult to heat during the winter.
The new portion of the elementary school also will include a therapy area for therapies such as speech therapy and occupational therapy.
The therapy area will all be in one space so the therapists do not have to travel around the building.
Another of the new classrooms will be for early childhood education and will connect to the existing junior kindergarten classroom.
Other projects that will be completed with money approved in the $7.2 million referendum last November include building infrastructure (approximately $2.2 million); a bus maintenance building (about $800,000); technical education and Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) expansion (approximately $1.2 million); improving safety and security by moving the high school office to the east side of the building (about $1 million); and district bus replacement (approximately $600,000).
In addition to the construction items and the buses, the referendum question included $400,000 to pay off the school district’s unfunded pension liabilities.
During his report to the Colfax Board of Education, Trevor Hovde, Colfax elementary principal, noted parents should be aware that if they were planning to use the playground this summer, the Colfax Elementary playground will not be available for families because of the building construction and the installation of new playground equipment and the reinstallation of existing equipment.