The Columbia School Board met for its first – fairly brief – meeting of the year on
Thursday, discussing concrete and other preparation for the next phase of the high school’s renovation as well as a few other matters like joining a collective of schools pushing for education reforms throughout the state.

Attendance among the board was somewhat sparse as president Greg Meyer and board members Kelly Meurer and Naureen Frierdich were absent. In Meyer’s absence, board vice president Lisa Schumacher led the meeting.

As it has for many recent meetings, discussion of the expansion and renovation project at Columbia High School served as the largest talking point for the January meeting.

The board approved an action item accepting the bid for pre-cast concrete to be used as walls for the new competition gym as part of phase two of the project, with Mid America Precast providing a bid of $1,670,000.

Board member Adam Hemken offered further context for this item, noting the original estimate from general contractor Poettker Construction had been rather lower at around $1.3 million, though this was mainly due to a miscommunication as the price for actually placing the concrete was not included in the lowest estimate provided by one vendor.

Hemken further spoke to the expense of this concrete.

“These walls are expensive,” Hemken said. “We know they’re expensive, and they’ve only gotten more expensive as time has gone on throughout the project… This has been a volatile price-point throughout the project… We’re not expecting the other stuff to be volatile. There’s only a couple areas there that are really in question.”

As previously reported, the project’s budget has faced some trouble as phase one has made progress and phases two and three have received further planning, with more recent estimates for these later phases coming in substantially higher than what was originally anticipated.

Hemken added on this agenda item that other construction bids for the project are on the way, though it was important to take care of the concrete item as it can take a long time to get into the queue for these materials.

Hemken also did most of the talking in a discussion on the CHS project later in the meeting, sharing with the board a collection of carpet and other materials to be used for the design aspect of the renovations.

Regarding the cost of the project at this point, Hemken said the cost of phases one and two stands at about $45.6 million and a revised estimate of phase three is at $2.5 million.

Hemken explained this version of phase three would cut certain renovations such as upstairs bathrooms, though it would still include a new elevator, a fridge and freezer setup for the kitchen, conversion of the current choir room into cafeteria space and other alterations to the current building.

He additionally said that, while phase two can largely move forward, phase three “is going to be the real question mark,” further expressing plans to discuss the cost of phase three as phase two sees progress.

This conversation ultimately closed the meeting as Hemken spoke about consulting with investment firm Stifel to see about the impact of borrowing more funds, with an additional $5 million expected to allow the district to maintain the current tax rate as planned, though he added he wouldn’t anticipate needing more than $4-4.5 million.

Another action item earlier in the meeting saw the board approve a resolution concerning Vision 2030, joining other schools in the state in support of education reform building on the previous Vision 20/20.

Columbia Superintendent of Schools Chris Grode offered explanation.

“That has been and gone, and from the Vision 20/20 they had a lot of good things that came out of it like evidence-based funding,” Grode said. “Now they’ve gotten back, and it’s the Vision 2030… It really does just support future-focused learning, shared accountability and predictable funding.”

Grode further explained the “predictable funding” point, as it pushes the state to provide funds to schools in order to pay for any newly passed mandates.

The only other action item addressed by the board concerned changes to instruction library media.

The first reading of this policy took place last month, and the board ultimately elected not to align with federal library standards in order to maintain what Grode described as local control.

During his superintendent’s report, Grode acknowledged how the first week of the new semester was dominated by snow days.

While the possibility of getting new equipment or outside contracting to handle future severe winter weather was entertained, Hemken noted that other schools in the area with such resources had the same number of snow days as did Columbia.

Grode also reported positive progress on the delivery of a bus ordered by the board as well as new scoreboards for the high school which are ready to be installed.

Assistant superintendent Amanda Ganey spoke on a number of items, including district shout-outs.

One such item concerned ACT prep which was recently discussed and approved by the board.

“Teachers are trained in it,” Ganey said. “They’re excited to implement that curriculum in their classroom, and our after-school program will also be utilizing that.”

Ganey also spoke about plans for district landscaping to be led by Columbia FFA students, a subject which has likewise been recently discussed among the board.

“It doesn’t look like it now, but we are going to be doing some landscaping with our FFA students and Mr. Birch in the front,” Ganey said. “We don’t have a final drawing yet. As I brought to the board, there were four different drawings. He’s gonna work with Shady Creek and his students and the FFA alumni to get a final drawing.”