By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The Hays USD 489 school board discussed plans for Wilson Elementary School and the Rockwell Administration Center at its work session Monday night.
Wilson will close as an elementary school at the end of the school year. Those students will move into Felten Elementary School (formerly Hays Middle School), which is being renovated.
The district plans to take the 2026-27 school year to renovate Wilson into an administrative building.
The Rockwell Administration Center, portions of which are almost 100 years old, will be vacated.
Wilson said he hopes the district can find a developer or entity that wishes to purchase and repurpose Rockwell.
The district has designated $1.5 million in its capital outlay fund for the Wilson renovations. Wilson said he did not think $1.5 million would be sufficient to complete all the needed renovations.
The district hopes to renovate the Wilson gym into a board/training room. The art and music rooms will also become training rooms.
Wilson said the district regularly uses the current board room and Rockwell's other spaces for training. The district also rents those spaces to other groups for training.
The Wilson library will be renovated into offices, and the pit at the library entrance will be filled in.
The district plans to complete the renovations in three phases.
Renovation Phase 1
• Convert gym to training/board room, medium renovation, 3,100 square feet
• Operable divider partition for board room
• Convert library to offices, medium renovation, 4,500 square feet
• Fill library pit
• Convert classrooms to training rooms, light/medium renovation, 2,100 square feet
• Divider partition
• Corridor/small rooms, light renovation
Renovation Phase 2
• West wing, office renovation, 17,500 square feet
Renovation Phase 3
• East wing, office renovation, 7,000 square feet
The district will lose warehouse space when it moves out of Rockwell, so Wilson said school officials hope to eventually build a metal warehouse/shop on Wilson school's current playground. That would be a potential fourth phase of construction.
Kyle Carlin, special education director, said the special education department has a substantial amount of occupational and physical therapy equipment that is stored at Rockwell.
Wilson said of Rockwell, "This building has great storage. Wilson does not."