Grand Island Senior High is expanding its cafeteria and band room.
The project will cost roughly $2.9 million and use ESSER III funds, provided for COVID relief, as the expansion provides for greater social distancing and emotional and social support.
“It’s so positive and comes at a great time, to know we can expand our spaces in that north cafeteria and the band room,” GISH Principal Jeff Gilbertson told The Independent.
The band area is “terrifically small” for the amount of students GISH has in band classes.
“Knowing we are going to alleviate that space for our students is just remarkable,” said Gilbertson.
More cafeteria space is needed, as well.
“That’s really been on the radar for a while, for me, personally, as a need for the school,” he said.
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Additions to the existing space were the best option for the decades-old facility.
“The area we’re talking about was built in 1956, I believe,” said Gilbertson. “(GISH) historically has been a series of add-ons since that original date, so here we are again, adding on to an old building, which is fine. We don’t have a lot of options. To build a new school would be over $150 million for a Class A high school, and we don’t have that kind of funding.”
He added, “This is a great alternative.”
The cafeteria serves more than 600 students at a time, including its entire freshman class.
“We have 745 freshmen at once, in 25 minutes. Think about that,” said Gilbertson.
The north cafeteria add-on will be a “multi-purpose space.”
“We’ll expand it and it will really pop the lid off the functionality of that. It’ll be more than a lunchroom, it will be a space for staff development, not only for our school, but for our district,” said Gilbertson. “There’s not a week that goes by that there isn’t something for the north cafeteria. It’s used constantly.”
Other upgrades for that space include a new sound system and modern windows to add natural light and make it more “aesthetically pleasing.”
Work has already started on the project.
A wall will be knocked down this month and a temporary wall installed so the cafeteria space can continue to be used by the students this year.
“It’s like remodeling your house while you live in it. It’s not ideal, but there’s really no options, assuming you don’t have another place to live,” said Gilbertson.
The band room will similarly lose a wall, explained GIPS Director of Buildings & Grounds Dan Petsch.
“In their case we’ll be able to relocate them to an alternate location for probably the last couple months of school, so we can get in that room and do that work,” he said. “With the cafeteria, we don’t have that luxury. We don’t have another place to send 400 kids for lunch every day.”
Petsch said expanding the band room is an especially exciting project.
“Their numbers are getting so much larger that the room they’re in right now has been super crowded,” he said. “This project will give them more space.”
The band room expansion will also include new practice rooms, he noted.
With the project, GISH will also add new security vestibules at its east and west entrances, said Petsch.
“We’ll remove the doors and extend them out so there’s a larger area for people to come in,” he said. “What that does for us, it gives us better line-of-sight of kids or visitors coming in, plus we’ll also have security glass.”
He added, “It’ll just work better.”
The project couldn’t be done without the community’s support, said Gilbertson.
“I’m so grateful, for many reasons, to work for Grand Island Public Schools, but on the long list of reasons is: our community support and board of education support for facilities, specifically, is just amazing,” he said. “I would stack our district up against anyone in the state, or country for that matter, for how much we take care of our facilities.”
The project is expected to be completed by fall 2023.