From the Goshen News:
A new pool may be in the cards for Goshen Community Schools after all.
Members of the Goshen Board of School Trustees Monday gave their blessing to the pursuit of a $17.15 million renovation and construction project. That project would include building a new pool at either the middle school or high school as well as the expansion of various music, physical education and classroom areas.
The next step for Goshen school officials? Working to garner enough petitions to get the building proposal on a referendum to be voted on in a special election this fall.
The move follows the recent announcement by organizers of the proposed Goshen Community Center that the proposal has been withdrawn and will no longer be pursued due primarily to cost concerns. The Community Center would have included gymnasiums, numerous health-focused programs, as well as several pools. Those pools would in turn have been used by Goshen Community Schools for its swimming program, and the corporation’s two aging pools — one at the middle school and one at the high school — would have been closed and converted into additional music and classroom space.
With the Community Center project officially a bust, GCS Superintendent Diane Woodworth noted that the needs of the corporation regarding the aging pool areas and additional space needs are still very real, and need to be addressed.
With that goal in mind, a hearing took place Monday in which school officials presented their new plan and heard comments from the public.
According to Woodworth, the foundation of the proposed project has actually been in the planning stages for several years, and has its origins in a 1997 remodeling project at the high school that left the school’s music areas short-changed on space.
In order to alleviate some of those space issues, a plan was formulated in 2007 to build a new 5-6 building for the corporation that would also include additional renovations and expansions at both the high school and middle school, though that plan eventually fell through do to a lack of support from the community at the time.
“So the actual renovation piece of this, the high school and middle school renovation pieces, have actually been in the planning stages since 2007,” Woodworth said.
Couple that with a significant and steady increase in the number of students participating in GCS’s lauded music programs, Woodworth indicated, and some form of expansion needs to be done. That’s to avoid a reduction in both participation and quality of the programs moving forward, she said.
As for the pool areas, Woodworth said that as the pools have aged, it has become increasingly costly and manpower intensive to keep them operating — a task she said typically costs the corporation about $200,000 per year on average. By tearing out the old pools and replacing them with one new pool, Woodworth said, the school corporation will save on annual maintenance costs while also gaining access to much-needed additional music and classroom space at both the middle school and high school.
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http://goshennews.com/local/x1504162888/UPDATE-New-pool-in-proposed-17-5M-project
