The Greene County School Board met Wednesday night in special session.

The Board approved the bid from Henkel Construction of Ames of $31,573,000 for the construction of the new high school and career academy. Following a $350,000 deduction for removing the wood veneer ceiling in the auditorium, the final bid totaled $31,223,000. However, once the land acquisition, design fees for OPN Architects, the three-percent contingency and existing renovations for the middle school and high school, the project remains to be over the $35.48 million price tag.

It was mentioned at the meeting that the Board needed to approve the bid to be able to install the pre-cast concrete walls of the facility by June. If the Board wanted until next week, that part of the project would have been pushed back until September. Also by approving the bid now, it was understood that the Board would continue to go through value engineering with Henkel to find more savings and make change orders in the future. However, if no other savings could be found, the Board could use the $1.5 million allocated for the existing high school renovations for the middle school, but then they would need to draw more funding through the Secure an Advanced Vision for Education (SAVE) funds.

The Board made it clear that they did not want to sacrifice quality of materials to save money on the project.