Abby K-12 considers adding 4 classrooms

By Kevin O’Brien

With permission from voters to spend up to $17 million on classroom additions and building renovations, the Abbotsford School Board is now faced with a decision on whether or not to expand the scope of its plans to accommodate future growth.

At a facilities committee meeting last Friday, architect Tim Ruppert of HSR Associates told board members about an option for constructing four additional classrooms that were not part of the referendum approved by voters in April. An extra 6,500 square feet would need to be built onto the northwest corner of the elementary school, pushing the building closer to a playground. Any future expansion would require the playground to be relocated.

Under the plan approved by voters, the district is currently planning to build six additional classrooms onto the middle/school building and two at the elementary school. With the four-classroom option on the table, the board could decide to scrap the two classrooms in the current plan or add them together, creating a total of six new classrooms at the elementary.

“Anytime we do one of these projects, especially with your enrollment pressures, we want to make sure we have opportunities for

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future expansion if you need to,” Ruppert told the committee.

Superintendent Ryan Bargender said the district asked HSR to draw up rough plans for the four additional classrooms, knowing how hard it is to accurately predict how many students are going to come into the district or what kind of special needs they may have.

“Every year we’re not sure what we’re going to get,” he said. “We’re not a district that can say ‘Well, this is the birth rate, so this is the amount of kids we’re going to see coming through.’” The district’s enrollment has grown by 170 students since it opened its new elementary school in 2009, and a total of seven classrooms were added in 2018 and 2023.

Elementary school principal Abbey Frischmann said the number of students is down by one from this time last year, when the third Friday head count in September put the school’s enrollment at 405. Right now, students in grades kindergarten, first and second are split into four classrooms, and grades third and fourth have three sections each.

“I don’t see us going beyond the four classrooms anytime soon,” she said, noting that any additional classrooms would most likely be used for special education.

The estimated cost of building the four additional classrooms is about $3.3 million. However, the district could see significant savings from adding these classrooms now instead of waiting to do them as a standalone project in the future, Ruppert noted. On the design portion alone, he said HSR’s normal fees would be cut in half – from $206,000 to $103,000 – if the four-classroom option were added. Also, if the two-room addition currently in the plan were to be scrapped, the savings would bring the overall cost of adding the four-room addition down to about $1.7 million.

With the four-classroom proposal added in, Ruppert said the design schedule will be pushed out about four weeks, so bids would likely go out between Thanksgiving and the end of the calendar year for construction in 2025 and 2026.

“It’s a good time to shift if you’re going to shift, but we are shifting gears pretty significantly if we were to go down this direction,” he said.

Contractors will have the option of bidding on both the original two-classroom option and on the four-classroom alternative. Depending on where the bids come in, the the school board may decide to dip into the district’s Fund 46, which has approximately $2.6 million designated for capital projects, to cover any costs beyond what was approved by the referendum.

The committee did not make any recommendations on the proposal, but the members seemed supportive of pursuing the idea.

“I’m all for exploring it,” said board member Eric Brodhagen, echoing what others said.

Other project details

Besides discussing the possibility of adding four more classrooms, Ruppert went through all of the other planned improvements, including the addition of 112 parking stalls to the lot on the east side of the K-12 campus along Fourth Avenue.

The plans from HSR call for creating 90degree stalls and a physical barrier between the parking area and a two-lane driveway for students and others to be dropped off or picked up in front of the middle/high school. Two raised walkways will also be installed.

Inside the middle/high school, the front office area and existing library will be rebuilt into a two-stage secure entrance with a reception area, several offices and a nursing station. Across the hall will be the new library with four distance learning labs, a peaked roof and multiple windows to allow in as much natural light as possible, Ruppert said.

“We’re trying to make sure it’s not just a warehouse full of books, and make sure it’s very much an educational type of space,” he said.

A section with six new classrooms, bathrooms and a breakout space in the center will be built onto the southeast corner of the middle/ high school, with room available outside for additional classrooms in the future. A new receiving area will also be built to the west of the pool, which will have a new heating and ventilation system installed.

The project also includes multiple upgrades to existing facilities, including an air conditioning unit in the north gym, a new exhaust system for the tech ed classroom and heating and ventilation updates in the agriculture classroom. The PA system for the entire campus will also be replaced, as will a water main coming into the building.

CHANGES COMING - This overhead map of the Abbotsford School District’s K-12 campus shows all of the additions and renovations in color, as planned after the $17 million referendum was passed in April. On the left side are options for both a two-room addition and four-room addition onto the elementary school. Space is also available for possible future additions.

GRAPHICBYHSRAS-Classrooms