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Collinsville School Board Holds Special Meeting To Discuss Construction Projects

By Stephanie Malench

smalench@timestribunenews.com

The Unit 10 School Board held a special meeting on December 7 to discuss the layout of the new Caseyville Elementary School and the addition to Dorris Intermediate School.

The new Caseyville Elementary school will be two stories, 52,000 square feet with 29 classrooms (including a dedicated music classroom and a new pre-kindergarten classroom), dedicated offices for occupational therapy, physical therapy, social work, speech, and principal, a 3/4 size gym/cafeteria, eight student bathrooms in each grade level wing, nurse’s office, and multipurpose area.

Each grade level will now have four rooms instead of three and the size of each room will go up from 600 square feet per room to 850 for grades 1-4 and 1,000 square feet for each kindergarten classroom.

The bus lane will be behind the building with a parking lot and elementary grade playground where the current school’s footprint is now.

The library will be to the east of the current library instead of attached as originally planned.

Total costs per square foot for the new school is conservatively estimated at $336.46.

Board members had several changes they would like to see alternate bids include. At the top of everyone’s list was a breezeway connecting the school to the library.

Finance committee chair and board treasurer Dr. Dennis Craft also encouraged the design team to calculate the increase in cost to make the gym/cafeteria full size and increase the size of each classroom.

Craft and Board President Gary Peccola said they would rather see everything done right now, than to wish things had been done differently 20 years down the road.

The addition on Dorris Intermediate School will add 7,300 square feet and increase the number of classrooms from 24 to 28.

Four restrooms will also be added to the new two story wing that mirrors the last expansion off the back of the building.

The cost per square foot of this addition has conservatively been estimated at $291.71.

Other renovations at DIS that are part of the project include moving the sensory room closer to the special education classrooms and making the current room down by the gym and cafeteria storage.

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