The Greenfield School Board is planning ahead for summer renovations at the high school. Greenfield Superintendent Kevin Bowman explains some of the plans being made. “We have quite a few health, life, safety issues in the district that we have to address. For the last six years, we have had a strategic plan in place where we have started addressing many of those. We have roofs in the district that are ranging on 30 to 40 years old on all 3 major school buildings. The matching grant – we would have to have our health, life, safety approval already in place because it is more of a matching grant, so we are going to do quite a bit of construction, we think. We are still not quite finalized on the plans yet.”
Bowman outlines some other health, life, and safety repairs that need to happen: “We do have our 1966 gym with a locker room that still looks like it did in 1966 with over 50 years of age on it. It was on our upgrade list, as well. Right now, that project is a possibility for the matching grant. It would cost somewhere around $120,000. We are still going to be short of that total, but at least we can get $50,000 of that work done, which we looked at as extra to the other issues. We’ve got fire alarms in two buildings that need to be upgraded that are both from the 1960s. Those are on our health, life, safety schedule plan, too.” The high school has outdated windows because they have run the length of their lifespan and have begun to form leaks.
Bowman said that he and the board’s main concern is property taxes when looking at the overall cost. “We want to try to maintain the tax rate as level or to have it go down each year. The good thing in our are is that the EAV has been going up each year. Hopefully, we will be able to accomplish this with some Health, Life, Safety bonds that will be dropping off, depending upon the amount of work we decide to do. We have a wish list that is a little over $2 million. That’s quite a bit of work to get done, but it’s a lot of necessary work.”
Other items in consideration for the maintenance schedule over the summer 2020 is tuck-pointing the north wall of the high school building, replacing lights at the football field, and some concrete work that needs patched and replaced on the east side of the high school. Bowman says the 1922 structure was updated in 1990 for ADA compliance, and he would like to see the district update the compliance once again in the near future. Bowman says the structure is a point of pride in the community and they hope to continue to maintain it for future generations.
The application for the matching grant is due to the State of Illinois by February 14th.