NTS to construct new R-II admin facility

By Phil Cobb | May 18, 2017 |

PHIL COBB/DAILY FORUM
This swath of grass at Maryville High School will have a new look come fall, as students from the Building Trades Class at Northwest Technical School begin construction of a new administration building. The facility should be in use for the 2018-19 school year. The current administration building will become an alternative school.

The Maryville R-II School District will soon have another construction project in the works.

Now that construction of the Lee and Nina Schneider Center for the Performing Arts and the FEMA structure/gymnasium are complete, the School Board has approved the 2017-’18 Northwest Technical School building trades project — construction of a new administration building in front of Maryville High School.

The current administration building will become an alternative school for the district.

“We are excited for it,” Maryville Superintendent Becky Albrecht said. “We identified a need for an alternative school, and by building a new administration building and converting the existing one we met that need.”

Construction of the new administration building is set to begin, to an extent, before the fall term commences. Albrecht said bid requests for the structure’s concrete pad will go out later this summer with the hope of having the foundation in place when building trades classes begin in August.

The building will be smaller than the district’s current central office in terms of square feet and is “nothing elaborate,” Albrecht said.

Due to the smaller size, some of the items in the current administration building will be moved to other district facilities for storage.

The new building will feature offices as well as a School Board meeting room. Preliminary plans presented to the board Wednesday don’t account for an extra four feet, which would expand the offices on the back side of the building.

The new R-II headquarters will stand near a grassy area north of the high school cafeteria. The front of the building will face a circle driveway named Spoofhound Drive.

Using the tech school’s building trades program to meet R-II facility needs is nothing new. The current administration building was also constructed by students under the direction of former instructor Pat McKee.

“When we build a house or a (Mozingo Lake) cabin like we have the last four years, the students have a learning platform that is their classroom, and now it will be a district central office,” tech school Director Jeremy Ingraham said.

“The building practices are similar, and we are excited to do that. It won’t be much different than a house. What we look at is the process. Putting stud walls up, or putting a roof on, or siding. There will be bathrooms, we will have rooms, we will have ductwork for the a/c. It is very similar … the same principles apply there.

“It will be part of the district for years to come, and we can say we did that.”

Ingraham said the project will be a collaborative effort between central office administrators; Adam Townsend, supervisor of buildings and grounds; building trades teacher Jay Drake; and himself.

Drake currently teaches two building trades classes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. There will probably be about 10 students in each class during the 2017-’18 school year.

Ingraham said the tech school has students attending from 13 schools in five different counties, and that enrollment could increase slightly since some schools are still working on student schedules for next year.

Albrecht said it will be cheaper for the district to build a district office than a new alternative school.

“We showed a need and a growing need,” she said.

The split-level floor plan of the current administration building will work nicely for the proposed alternative school, district officials say, with one floor to be used for elementary programs and the other for high-school classes.

“There was a need for an alternative school setting to help all kids, and this what we are in the business to do,” Ingraham said. “The challenge we have is space, and we sat down as administrators and asked how we could do that. How do we find a solution?

“Having building trades as part of my programming it was offered, and I suggested that we could do this working as a team.”