School Board to receive building report Monday

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

June 29, 1997

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

The Bemidji School Board will hold a special meeting Monday to receive a final report from its Facilities Committee and DLR Group, a Minneapolis-based architectural firm hired by the district in January.

The meeting is 7 p.m. in the district office at the High School.

The committee's recommendation, according to board Chairman Jim Smalley, is to build new buildings for both the High School and Lincoln Elementary. And the board will probably take some form of action accepting the report, he said Saturday -- meaning the district will be seeking public approval to build the schools.

Smalley said there are no specific ideas as to where the two schools might be located, but the report calls for building a 500-student facility in the Lincoln area and offers few ideas where a new High school may be built.

The Facilities Committee was assembled in August to determine if there were significant enough problems with the two schools to warrant the district taking action. After touring both, the committee found that Lincoln was not handicapped accessible, had poor ventilation and contained small classrooms, and problems in the High School included space limitations and a suspect ventilation system.

The committee's report determined there was need of more than $400,000 in repairs, meaning any final action taken to either renovate or build new will have to be approved by the district's residents in a ballot question.

The committee was then authorized by the School Board to move into a second phase of the study to determine what options the district had, including reorganization, renovation or construction.

In February and March, DLR held focus groups and gathered information from various parties who would be affected by the building decisions, and April was used to explore solutions, test scenarios and cost models.

DLR refined their solutions and cost models and hosted community focus groups to present the information in May, and finally this month finalized the process.