Firth School District working on school upgrades

FIRTH — While school is out for the summer, the Firth School District is hard at work improving its schools.

Earlier this year Firth School District patrons approved a 10-year $400,000 plant facilities levy to replace its previous two supplemental levies. The money from that levy is now being used for several projects around the district.

“The High School gym, the Middle School gym, the Elementary School gym and the auxiliary gym are all already either done or in the process of being worked on,” Firth School District Superintendent Basil Morris told Community Pioneer.

Morris said that all three gym floors were refinished. The Middle School gym floor only needed minor repairs and refinishing. The other two gym floors needed more work.

“They took it down to the wood. It will be painted and redone. Everything will be redone basically like brand new floors,” Morris said.

The district also replaced all of the lights throughout its buildings with LED lights.

“That will save us thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in energy costs. Plus, we received a 74 percent rebate from Rocky Mountain Power on the purchase of our lights,” Morris said.

Morris said one of the large projects the district wanted to do this year was replacing the track.

“We’ll do the asphalt section as soon as we can get the bids in and get it approved,” he said. “That’s out for bid right now.

Unfortunately, Morris explained that the district couldn’t find anyone who could replace the rubber sections of the track this year.

“We had already kind of conceded that we won’t have any home track meets this year anyways,” he said. “It should be ready before next summer.”

The district is also addressing some safety concerns such as repairing sidewalks and replacing eyewash stations.

Also budgeted this year are some other general upgrades such as new paint and carpet.

Below is a summary of the school district’s 2021-2022 budget. The budget has minor changes from last year, including the loss of the one-time funds the state provided for COVID-19 relief, teachers moving to different schools in the district and some new staff hires.