School board members reviewed and approved the schematic designs for Project Washington during their December 13th meeting.
The Oak Street building houses voluntary pre-kindergarten programs, preschool programs, district offices, and the Paul Bunyan Learning Cooperative. It also serves as the area’s welcome center, which will remain in place with a secure entrance at the front of the building. The Transportation and Registration offices will be moved to the east side of the Welcome Center, while the Community Education offices will be on the west side. There will be a flexible, multi-purpose space in the middle of the Welcome Center to be used for events such as community meetings, conferences or information sessions.
More bathrooms will be added to early childhood classrooms, existing bathrooms will be updated to meet Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines, and a wheelchair lift will be added to the south side of the building, which currently has stairs only for entrances.
Buses and parents will travel and pick up from busy Oak Street to the southwest corner of the building on South Eighth Street and Pine Street, while the southeast entrance will be a controlled entrance for staff.
Visitors will still park in front of the building and enter through the welcome center.
“One of the things we’ve tried to do is preserve the beautiful facade of this building because this is really the historic showcase piece for our school district,” Superintendent Laine Larson told the Board of Directors December 13. ‘…I think what’s just really cool about that is that we can do the functional stuff in the back – get the kids out of that crazy way up front and stuff, but we still have places for people to park where they can come in to register their kids, and check in on the fun’ N’ Friends, those kinds of things, and they still have access to the beautiful lobby and beautiful facade of this building.”
So far the project is under budget and will now move into the design development stage.
Board members also approved construction documents for the upgrades to the Brainerd Learning Center on December 13.
Crews are set to begin work this summer on the project that will see a new common area and cafeteria space, a larger kitchen service area, new family and consumer science laboratories and upgrades to restrooms.
The project is under budget so far, at less than $800,000.
In other construction work on December 13, the Board of Directors:
agreed to a proposal H2I Synthetic Sports Flooring for the Multipurpose Gym at Brainerd High School $84,930. Steve and Cindy Clough, owners of Just For Kix, donated $70,000 for the floors.
Authorized Renovations to Wing A on the North Campus at BHS with a construction budget of just $10.53 million.
Accepted proposals From All State Communications for Avigilon cameras, servers, and card access systems at the new Lincoln Education Center, BHS, Washington for $429,123.