Since the April 3rd passage of a $21.48-million bond referendum for the Greene County School District, lots of “behind-the-scenes” work has been done on the project.

Superintendent Tim Christensen says the architect firm, OPN Architects, has conducted several meetings with teachers, staff and some community members to get their ideas of what they would like to see included in a new high school, auditorium, gymnasium and middle school. He points out that a steering committee, which includes himself and three school board members, have been working closely with OPN to develop conceptual designs for the project. They’ve also visited newer school buildings in the Ballard, Boone, North Polk and Gilbert districts to see their layouts and what they liked and disliked about each building.

“Architects are putting those things together and coming up with about a half-dozen different preliminary designs for (the) steering committee to look at. Right now gathering a lot of information to put this all together, so hopefully sometime this summer they will come out with a design that can potentially be shared with the public to get some input and thoughts on.”

The School Board recently approved Piper Jaffrey as the fiscal agent to sell the bonds for the project. Christensen notes that they are looking to sell about $26 million in bonds. The district will bond against not only the $21.48 million from the referendum vote, but also against the $4.5 million from the voter-approved physical plant and equipment levy and the Secure and Advanced Vision for Education (SAVE) funds. The Board chose to sell about $16 million in bonds this August, due to having a maximum of $21 million in debt capacity to borrow against in one year, and he explains the other reason.

“If one of the bond issuance (were) less than $10 million, a local bank or an entity would have the capacity to purchase the entire bond. That’s another thing that again Piper Jaffrey has recommended is something good to put out there for banks and entities that they may have some interest in doing that. So that’s another reason to break it into two (phases).”

The total cost of the project is $35.48 million. The project consists of building a new high school and career academy on south Highway 30, east of American Athletic Incorporated in Jefferson, along with a new gymnasium and performing arts center, while also renovating the current high school into a middle school. The project is slated to be completed by the 2020 school year.