SHELLEY — Nearly every school in the Shelley School District is getting upgraded.

Earlier this year, patrons of the Shelley School District resoundingly passed a $7.5 million bond to repair and upgrade schools and district buildings. With the bond passing, the district wasted no time on getting to work.

“We have been super busy with projects, basically, since the bond passed,” Shelley School District Operations Manager Blake Jenson told the school board at the June 24 board meeting.

Jenson told Community Pioneer he hopes to take care of the most substantial and pressing projects before the end of the year.

This year, the district has budgeted to spend $3.6 million on these projects and general maintenance and equipment.

“The majority of the bond is being spent this year and another big chunk next year. Then after that, we feel like we’re ahead to a point where we shouldn’t be replacing boilers and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Jenson said.

Shelley High School

The high school has a total of eight projects scheduled for this summer. However, most of the projects are relatively simple; parking lot repairs, paging system upgrade, concrete flooring in the science room, camera system upgrade and updating the fire system.

The three largest projects scheduled for this year are replacing the boilers, replacing the gym heat pumps and replacing the bleachers.

“All the boilers in there were original when the school was built in 1991,” Jenson said.

He explained that the original boiler system was cheap and inefficient. 

“Our efficiency went from less than 80 percent efficient boilers up to 97 percent efficient boilers to heat that school,” Jenson said.

He said when they replaced the boilers they also added tankless water heaters so they don’t have to continually heat water.

The boilers, Jenson explained, are only one part of the heating system for the school. The other is the heat pumps that are in every classroom and the gyms. 

He said the district had been spending a lot of money to keep repairing the heat pumps. He found that it was roughly the same cost as what the district was paying each year on repairs to upgrade them.

“Because we were running on only 50 percent capacity for our gymnasium, that’s our first project,” Jenson said. “As soon as the heat pumps come in, we’ll get them installed.”

The boilers and heat pump upgrades and replacements are scheduled to be completed in July.

The bleacher replacement has run into the same problem at the High School as they are having at the Middle School. They are having trouble getting the steal.

“They said they are doing everything in their power to get those in by August 10. We’re worried that if it’s after that date, there won’t be a way that we can do it this year,” Jenson said.

Hobbs Middle School

Hobbs is slated to have its old chalkboards removed and replaced with modern interactive screens, receive a new walk-in freezer, get new bleachers, have sections of the roof replaced and have a new HVAC system installed.

Many of the projects are still on track to be completed this year. However, the new HVAC system has been pushed back to 2022.

“With the bond passing in March, it didn’t give us enough time with the engineers to design a system that could be done this summer,” Jenson said.

He explained that because of the size of the project, it would not be possible to replace the HVAC system during the school year.

“If we can get procurement done sometime in August or September, we’ll be first in line to get going on the HVAC system as soon as school’s out,” Jenson said.

Jenson said he is concerned about the overall cost of the HVAC replacement. They had originally budgeted $2 million for the project, but the new estimates from the engineers are around $2.8 million.

“When you look at the total bond of $7.5 million, $800,000 is a lot of money out of that,” he said.

One of the other major projects at Hobbs this year is replacing sections of the roof. Jenson said they’ve completed everything they had planned this year for the roof.

“Three sections this year. One section last year. Those have all been completed,” he said. “The only sections left are above the offices and the gymnasium which will be coming up in the next couple of years.”

Hobbs is also getting a new walk-in freezer. Jenson said the current freezer is original to the school.

“It’s well extended its life expectancy,” Jenson said.

The freezer project is on track to be completed in September.

The bleachers were scheduled to be replaced in August. However, they have been delayed back to September or October.

“What I’ve been told is that steal has been backlogged,” Jenson explained.

Jenson said the technology upgrades are on track to be completed in July.

Dean Goodsell Elementary School

Goodsell is being converted into a kindergarten and special services center. It needed an entirely new HVAC system, a remodel of six classrooms and a new playground.

“Phase one (of the HVAC project), that’s getting tied up. We expect that to be done fairly shortly. But the rest of the building will kind of drag out for another few months,” Jenson said.

The goal is to complete the project in August. Jenson said they are on track to meet that goal.

Goodsell has the capacity for 13 classrooms. Six classrooms are getting a full remodel to host kindergarten classes. The other classrooms are only getting minor upgrades, such as new cabinetry.

Jenson said they are on track to finish the remodels by sometime in October.

The last two projects scheduled for this year at Goodsell are parking lot repairs and building a new playground.

“We’re working with a great playground company. I don’t see any problems with delays. I’m pretty sure we’ll have that wrapped up end of July,” Jenson said.

To save some money on the new playground, Jenson said they plan on asking for volunteers to help build it, once the district receives all of the new equipment.

Sunrise Elementary

Sunrise is getting a new sprinkler system, access control upgrades, a new playground fence, paging system and new boilers.

“They are getting a new sprinkler system. We expect that to be done any day now,” Jenson said. 

Jenson explained that Sunrise already has a sprinkler system that covered about 80 percent of the lawn. The other 20 percent had to be watered by irrigation pipe. 

“Our irrigation pipe actually went through some neighbors’ yards and started leaking, last year, into their yards. So instead of upgrading the pump and all these lines, we decided to just add on to the current system and irrigate with city water,” Jenson said.

Sunrise is the first of the Shelley schools to get a new access control system. The new system integrates with lockdown and fire systems.

It is on schedule for completion in July, as is the new playground fencing.

Jenson explained that they are upgrading the current paging system at Sunrise and the other schools in the district so they are all on one uniform system.

As for the boilers at Sunrise, Jenson said they were starting to fail and were unrepairable.

“So I went with the high-efficiency Evergreen Boiler System,” Jenson said.

They replaced the boilers in April.

Riverview Elementary

Riverview, being the newest school in the district, has the fewest projects scheduled for this year. They originally planned just to sealcoat the parking lot. However, they had a water line rupture.

“It was a suprise how much needed to be repaired. Typically, on a normal year for the district, we probably repair four of those big lines. But nothing to that extent of how many feet we had to replace. We had to replace more than 80 feet,” Jenson said.

District

Some changes are being made to school district buildings. These include building a new storage facility, Moving the Child Nutrition Department to the maintenance building, expanding the bus parking lot, installing a new HVAC system for the maintenance building and relocating the district servers.

“We are building a new district storage facility. Half of that storage facility will be used for food services,” Jenson said.

He explained that the district has not had enough space to store all the food they need for the year that is paid for by the federal government. By adding more dry storage and a walk-in freezer, the district will be able to save money on food services.

“So when our commodities come every week, as well as other food we’ve purchased, it will all come into that dry storage facility. So they can be stored in the building and then delivered to our schools. It’s just a more efficient program,” Jenson said.

That new building is scheduled to be finished in October.

The district’s servers were located at Goodsell. With Goodsell under construction, they moved the servers to the maintenance building where the district’s IT staff was already located.

Savings

Jenson said the School District has worked to save as much money as possible with all of these projects.

One of the biggest ways they are saving money is by doing most of the work at Goodsell themselves.

“I’m acting as the general manager construction manager so we’re not having to shell out additional fees. That right there saves us roughly $200,000 on that Goodsell project,” Jenson said.

He said they’ve also been able to save money by upgrading to more energy-efficient systems.

“It might cost a little bit more upfront, but has huge, immediate savings on our energy bills every month,” Jenson said. “Buying equipment that is more energy-efficient allows us to take advantage of the rebate programs with Intermountain Gass and Rocky Mountain Power.”

He said by installing energy-efficient boilers at Goodsell, Intermountain Gas will cut the district a $3,000 check.

“A lot of these utility companies are making it really easy for us to go with more efficient options,” Jenson said.

Jenson explained that they aren’t necessarily coming in under budget for the projects overall. He said equipment and materials occasionally cost more than what they had in their original estimates. However, he finds ways to make up for those extra costs.