By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
The Great Bend school district purchased the property at 1809 24th Street, just off the 281 Bypass, in September with early childhood education in mind. Monday night, the USD 428 Board of Education heard updates on the future district education center and preschool, which is slated to begin operations in the fall of 2024. Matt Hamm, vice president at Wichita-based Schaefer Architecture, said he has enjoyed coming up with a design.
"What a great building, first of all," he said. "It's not every day you get to, as an architect, work on something that's as new, as well put together as that building is, and turn it into something that's completely different than orginally was planned. Honestly, the building works fantastic for what the district is planning to do with it."
The nuts and bolts of the interior design includes 15 classrooms in the eastern half of the building. Each classroom can hold 15 students with up to one teacher and two assistants - that's room for approximately 450 students in half-day sessions. Each classroom will be approximately 600 square feet, and the rooms will be grouped together with shared restrooms, teacher workrooms, and a breakout space. A playground will be built to the east of the building.
The west side of the building will be used as the new district education center. Administrative offices will be built along the west wall.
"That open area on the left, on the administration side, that actually has those cubicles that are there already," said Superintendent Khris Thexton. "We don't know how they're going to be set up. We just know we're going to maximize the space. We'll probably have more cubicles than needed, but I'd rather have too many."
Hamm added that because the building will house up to 225 preschool-age children at a time, his firm is working to bring a preschool feel to the east side.
"There's still room for character in the building," he said. "With little kids, we don't want to be institutional about it. We'll open up the bag of design tricks and come up with some things where the kids can have an exciting space. We're maximizing the space, but we're going to be creative, too."
The property was valued at more than $4 million when the district purchased it for $1.3 million in September. CUNA Mutual agreed to donate the remaining $2.7 million. Architects put a budget of $4.37 million for the renovations inside, though that number will change once the project is put out for bids. Thexton said the district originally planned to use $2.2 million in federal ESSER dollars on the project, but that number can also change.
"It's one of those things where it's better to be lucky than good sometimes," he said. "Not that I want to go back and do COVID again to get money like this, but it is nice to have these funds that we can do something that we probably wouldn't have been able to do otherwise."
The district currently has limited half-day preschool capacity at Washington and Riley schools, as well as the full-day Little Panthers Preschool available to USD 428 staff with prorated tuition. Beyond a small enrollment fee, the half-day preschools are offered free of charge to the community. The state reimburses the district per pupil.
"It just helps them at three and four years old start that educational foundation," said USD 428 Public Information Director Andrea Bauer. "Research shows the more you invest in young kids, the more it pays off through K-12 in their academic abilities."