Major school projects to begin in St. Charles
The next eight months will mark a busy construction season for St. Charles schools, but if trends hold it will also be cheaper than officials expected.
The district already reaped a $2.8 million savings during the bond sale process to finance improvements to Thompson and Wredling middle schools and the Norris Recreation Center and to install a new artificial turf field at St. Charles North High School.
On Thursday, officials gave a preliminary OK for the construction and materials for the new turf. The expectation was a $1.2 million price tag, but the bids the school board's business services committee viewed last night came to $1.02 million.
Bids for the big project - the expansion and improvement of Thompson - won't go out until May. District officials put the cost of that work, which won't begin until August, at $47.3 million. School board members and any community members interested in seeing what the new Thompson will look like can attend April's next business services committee meeting, where renderings will be on display for the first time.
First up for actual construction will be Wredling and the overhaul of the Norris Recreation Center.
The Wredling work will cost $2.54 million and begin next week. Only exterior work will occur until school lets out for the summer. Contractors must complete all the improvements by Aug. 15 or face a financial penalty for each day the work is late.
Likewise, $2.27 million of work will begin at Norris next week. The facility, which the district still owns but contracts with the St. Charles Park District for management, will see big improvements, including the installation of an elevator. That work is set to be completed by the end of October.
Installation of the new artificial turf at St. Charles North will begin April 27. Committee members decided to include an environmentally friendly fill for the turf rather than the ground-up tires or shoes found in many turf fields. Specialists told the committee the fill will provide the same quality field while eliminating reservations about using a tire-based fill that may have picked up pollutants during its days on the roadways.
One final project the St. Charles school community might be looking forward to is the removal of the mobile trailer at Ferson Creek School. The district is seeking any takers for it, and officials might even be willing to give it away for free if it results in savings for the district. Now, the cheapest price officials have found to remove the trailer is $80,000.
In other action, the committee gave tentative approval to staff members to increase the cost of high school lunches for the next school year. Students currently pay $2.75 for a basic meal; that would go up to $3.