Harmony Grove School District kicks off the year with a brand new high school | New

District Superintendent Heath Bennett said when he was hired six years ago, former Superintendent Daniel Henley had a list of items on his desk that he told Bennett about.

“It was basically that the three or four big projects that the community and the school board wanted to see happen would basically be to build a new high school, a new cafeteria for junior high, try to go the mile and also to build a safe room,” says Bennett.

Each of these objectives has been achieved or is in the process of being achieved.

The first time the mileage was put to a vote in 2019, it failed by just 16 votes.

“It was actually a blessing for us because the way interest rates dropped at that time, it actually took a whole mill out of what we had to ask voters, and then we did it. adopted the second time about six months later,” he said. .

Bennett said the old high school had been there for more than 40 years and is now the district’s new middle school, serving seventh, eighth and ninth grades. The high school is for grades 10 through 12.

“Among the schools in Saline County, we are the smallest. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just what it is,” Bennett said.

He said early in his job, one of the things he and the school board did was try to get the word out about what the district needs.

This is the third year of the new cafeteria on campus, the money for the cafeteria does not come from mileage. The cost of the cafeteria was around $3 million, according to Bennett. The cafeteria is 10,000 square feet, has plenty of space, televisions, and a kitchen with multiple options so students can choose what they have for lunch each day.

“Of that $3 million, we had about $1.4 million from the state helping us and the rest we did on a second lien bond, so we didn’t have to go to the voters,” he said.

Bennett said that by building the new cafeteria without having to travel to voters’ homes, it could build trust between the community and school officials, which would drive the mileage for the new high school.

He said the total cost of the new high school was just over $10 million.

He also added that lower interest rates allowed them to ask voters for less money than they had the first time they tried to pass the mileage.

The new high school provides students with new science labs, a new library, new classrooms for everything from choir to science classrooms.

The money for the safe, Bennett was obtained from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, more commonly known as FEMA.

The vault is still under construction, but the walls around it have already been placed. This would serve as a safety measure for the teachers in the students in case of an emergency. Bennett said they built it so they could accommodate every student and faculty member in the safe house if needed.

Bennett emphasized that this was the community’s project and it took everyone coming together to make it happen.