ROGERS -- The School Board on Tuesday approved spending $4.5 million on improvements at its four middle schools, including adding a track at each school and heating and cooling systems in two gymnasiums.
The guaranteed maximum price the board approved for the four tracks was $2,552,092, an average of $638,023 per track.
Personnel
The Rogers School Board on Tuesday approved hiring three new administrators for the 2020-21 school year:
• Melody Sebastian as executive director of federal and state programs. Her 24 years of experience includes coordinating federal programs, curriculum and testing in Mulberry since 2016.
• Molly Brock as principal of Old Wire Road Elementary School. Brock has been assistant principal at Lee Elementary in Springdale since 2007.
• Lisa Tilmon as assistant principal at Heritage High School, where she is now an academic facilitator.
Source: Rogers School District
The four-lane tracks won't be regulation size and therefore won't be used for competition; they will be a little shy of a quarter-mile around. Physical education classes will use them, track teams will use them for practice and the community will be invited to use them when schools are out, said Charles Lee, assistant superintendent.
"We see it as a neighborhood community project," Lee said.
Oakdale Middle School's track will be built within an existing trail loop on the school's north side. Elmwood's track will go on the building's south side. Kirksey's track will be to the northwest of the building, where a soccer and football field used to be, Lee said.
Lingle's track will be on the school's south side. A retaining wall will have to be built because of how the property slopes, which is why the project's cost at $667,115 is a little higher than the others, Lee said.
The School District hopes to have each track finished by August, he said. C.R. Crawford Construction and Hight Jackson Associates were hired to design and build the tracks.
The district also aims to have heating and air conditioning systems installed in the gymnasiums of Elmwood and Oakdale middle schools by the start of next school year. The board approved spending a maximum of nearly $2 million on those two projects, which will be done by Milestone Construction Co.
The system at Elmwood will cost about $1.2 million and $740,000 at Oakdale. Elmwood's cost is higher because the gym is larger, and thus will require not only more heating and cooling units, but more work to install them, according to the district.
Both gyms already have heat but lack air conditioning. The new systems will control heating and cooling for the gyms, Lee said.
Principals of the two schools are excited to be getting air conditioning in their gyms, he said.
"When you're trying to have assemblies, it gets hot real quick," Lee said.
The gymnasiums at Kirksey and Lingle middle schools already have heat and air conditioning.
Also included in the Elmwood project are accessibility improvements to a coach's office and a restroom, in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Those improvements make up about $84,000 of the total cost.
The middle school projects are part of a larger package of athletic-facility projects the School Board agreed to do last year. The district also is building a new competition gymnasium at Rogers High School, a new multipurpose space at Heritage High School and baseball and softball fields at both high schools.
NW News on 04/23/2020