No official decision has been made but the District 205 Board of Education indicated that they’re moving forward with a plan to reduce the size of the high school auditorium.
School board members held a special meeting last night online via ZOOM where they discussed the proposal from Russell Construction.
The first proposal would see the auditorium size shrink by about two-thirds to add a commons.
Board member Maury Lyon was in favor of reducing the size of the auditorium to add the commons space in hopes of being able to update it in the future.
“Right now we have a space that I refer to as a barn… for theater it’s terrible,” Lyon said. “For choral and band the sound goes everywhere. It’s not [really] thought out. It was built in [1959] and we put a few panels on the wall but it doesn’t do what we need to do to allow them [to perform] well.”
The other option being floated was to leave the auditorium as is and build the commons space in the courtyard across the hall from the auditorium.
No work would be done to the auditorium and that bothered School Board President Tianna Cervantez.
“For years I have sat back and I have listened to this community complain that we do not take fine arts, theater, choir/band as seriously as we do athletics. And, I feel that Option A2 provides us an opportunity to say that we’re making a commitment to our community to say that we are going to renovate this space. To me, Option B feels like ‘yeah you’re going to be put to the side again.'”
One of the biggest concerns to board members was costs. With the COVID-19 pandemic reducing tax revenue from the state, the board was told that projections for state funding would be significantly reduced for next year.
The cost of the base option was relatively similar, however, once the proposals for the offshoots see the costs go up dramatically.
The board took a show of hands and the majority were for pursuing the first option, to decrease the size of the auditorium.
The next step will be for drawings to be made and more accurate cost projects to be determined before the board approves bid specs.
