Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Former San Jon teacher Peggy Gates points at an image to her husband Ben during a community meeting Wednesday where architects took suggestions for the new school building.
SAN JON - Two things stood out in residents' preferences about a new San Jon School.
They want plenty of shade outdoors, and they don't mind that the new building will be smaller.
A final design for the structure took another step Wednesday when district officials and architects hosted a community meeting at the school cafeteria to take input on the project. More than 30 people attended.
Owen Kramme of Albuquerque-based Formative Architecture firm, which has been tasked to design the school, said the final design should be wrapped up by October or November, then will go out to bid. An artist's rendering of the building should be ready by summer.
Kramme said construction should begin in early 2026 and take 14 to 18 months. That would put the opening of the facility at sometime in 2027.
The school will be built on the district's baseball field. The San Jon district has not fielded a high-school baseball team in more than a decade.
After students move into the new building, the old structures will be demolished except for a vocational agriculture building and the swimming pool.
Christine Williams, another Formative architect, said the project is budgeted at $29 million, with nearly all the money coming from the state. She said the project's cost won't be known until it goes out to bid.
She said the new school will be 53,000 square feet - a bit larger than earlier iterations because of the addition of a second high-school-sized gymnasium and two more locker rooms.
That still is a downsized version of the current campus, which is just shy of 100,000 square feet for fewer than 150 students.
San Jon alum Linda Pratt said she was pleased to learn the new school would be smaller than the current campus, which contains buildings built piecemeal over the decades.
She said students often find it difficult to go from one building to another in a timely manner.
"Our community is closer than the building," Pratt quipped.
Another resident expressed a wish for closer classrooms.
After the meeting, Williams said she was struck by how little nostalgia residents hold for the current campus, part of which dates to the 1930s.
"I thought people would be maybe more tied to this building, being that it's been here for so long," Williams said. "But everyone seems to really acknowledge that this building is too big. I think that's something we also recognize right off the bat.
"I was telling somebody earlier: We brought an intern with us from our office, and he got lost here," she added.
The primary reason the school is being replaced is rising maintenance costs. District buildings need new roofs, a new boiler system and other repairs that would cost almost as much as an entirely new school.
After architects answered questions, residents were assigned to place stickers on dozens of images that appealed to them that might be incorporated into the school's design.
Many favored images of outdoor classes, a playground with a large shade structure and raised-bed gardens.
The architects also asked residents to write on sticky notes their wishes for the new school or dislikes about the current facility. They later placed stickers on the notes that resonated with them the most.
Based on the sticker placements, residents liked suggestions for outdoor shade structures, outdoor classrooms, trees and gardens.
"I think ones that really stood out, which I think we were expecting, was the outdoor shade discussion," Williams said. "Obviously wind and climate is something we're really going to have to study."
Residents also liked suggestions of concrete flooring instead of carpeting, plus display areas for students' work.
Asked to levy criticisms of the current school complex, one person wrote, "It's too cold."
Another wrote that it's "showing its age."
