WEST TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTWO/WAWV)– The Vigo County School Board now has a firm timeline for the corporation’s ongoing facilities study.
Vigo County School Corporation Superintendent Chris Himsel has been vocal about wanting this study completed since he started at the corporation in 2023; Gibraltar Design is leading the work. Officials from the organization spoke at a board meeting on Monday to give details on what this work will entail.
“What we’re doing for the rest of this school year, is they’re basically visiting every school,” Himsel said. “Crawling in the basements and up in the ceiling tiles and up on the roofs, all those different things, trying to get a handle on what is in good working order and what needs to be repaired.”
The next phase includes opportunities for feedback from teachers and other employees– as well as community members. Himsel said this allows the firm to see how educators and others around the area think learning spaces should be utilized.
“Obviously the way we engage kids in 2024 is a little different than the way we engaged kids in 1972,” Himsel said. “What are the ramifications of those changes in terms of the space that we provide in the classroom.”
Himsel emphasized that community input is built into the process — which will play out over the course of 2024 — and that input will help determine what steps are taken moving forward.
“The last phase of that is to put that into dollars and cents in how much does it cost, and get feedback from our community on what we can support and want to move forward with in preparing our learning environments for our students throughout the community, and what won’t be supported,” Himsel said.
Officials from Gibraltar will continue to provide updates at board meetings on a monthly basis.
In other business, Chief Operating Officer John Newport detailed the ongoing maintenance in 2024. These projects are part of a long-term plan, but he added a few locations had work moved up due to the heatwave at the start of the school year.
“We had a couple that we really had to stay on top of quite a bit throughout that heatwave,” Newport said. “Two of them, at McClain and Terre Town Elementary School, we moved those up on our regular replacement schedule, especially at McClain because it houses our IT department.”
A full list of the maintenance work will be added to the corporation’s website in the coming days.
