By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Construction is scheduled to start on the new Hays High School in August and the $95 million project is on budget.
Hays school board members saw the design for the new school at their meeting Monday night.
"We hope to finish within the next two weeks and then run to the finish line," Kirby Pennington, DLR project architect, said of the plans.
Bids are scheduled to be let in June and awarded in July.
Construction is scheduled to be completed in May 2025 when this year's freshmen will be seniors.
The new school will have a capacity of 1,200 students. Enrollment at the high school is 960, and HHS principal Shawn Henderson estimated it will be 1,000 in the fall.
The new school will have an 800-seat, handicap-accessible performing arts center, a new gym, and a large commons/cafeteria.
Classes will be separated into learning commons with large hallways with extra seating where students can work collaboratively.
The commons has large glass windows that look out onto the football field.
Hays High School students will continue to use the wood shop in what will be the new middle school. Creating adequate storage in the new high school for that program was cost-prohibitive. Hays Middle School will have its own woods shop in the former metals shop.
The design for renovating the former high school into a new middle school has not been completed. However, administrators have expressed a desire to include in those plans a complete separation of the high school students from the middle school students in the Career and Technology Education wing.
The greenhouse also will remain in its current location. These are the only two areas the new high school will continue to use in its old building.
Bathrooms
The new school will have both group and private bathrooms. The private bathrooms will have a common hand washing station and exterior doors that are open to public areas. However, they will have single rooms like closets with doors that lock.
The school will have three blocks of private bathrooms with a total of 34 stalls.
Pennington said educators have said bullying is occurring in the group bathrooms.
Board president Craig Pallister, who is a former Hays Middle School principal, said he had students who won't go to the bathroom all day because they didn't want to use a communal bathroom.
"I hate for bathrooms to be political," he said. "There is a need for privacy for faculty and kids. That's why we are here—to make them comfortable so they can learn."
Board member Curt Vajnar said he was concerned about the private bathrooms.
He asked how the bathrooms were going to be monitored. He said he was concerned a boy might push a girl into one of the bathrooms and lock the door.
Pennington said the exteriors of the bathroom doors would be monitored by cameras.
Vajnar said many community members had expressed concerns to him about the private bathrooms.
Henderson said, "At the end of the day, we're about privacy and dignity and keeping people safe every day."
Superintendent Ron Wilson said community bathrooms were the least safe place in the school.
Pennington said the private bathrooms also saved space and were more economical.