School Board forms committee to help name new school
By Tracy Ouellette
SLN Staff
The East Troy Community School District Board of Education didn’t make a decision on a name for the new elementary school at the June 13 meeting, instead voting to form a committee to look at the options.
The board had asked for community feedback at the May 9 meeting and the School District put up a survey on the district’s website. About 200 people responded and the results were a bit mixed. While the frontrunner – Little Prairie Primary School, which the kids at Doubek Elementary School came up with in a problem-based learning assignment – received a lot of positive feedback, there was some concern with the name.
A large portion of the respondents said they didn’t care for the use of “primary” in the official name, which board members had decided was a good idea since the district already had an elementary school with Prairie View and they wanted to distinguish the new school as being for the youngest learners in the district.
School Board member Steve Lambrechts said his only concern with Little Prairie Primary School was that Little Prairie was an actual municipality within the School District and he thought that might be confusing. He suggested they take the word “little” out of the name.
School Board member Martha Bresler said she really wanted to honor all the hard work the kids at Doubek did in creating the name for the new school, but understood some of the possible issues. She suggested forming a sub-committee to look at the new name with School Board members, some administration/staff members and citizen representatives.
The board approved the committee formation. Anyone interested in serving on the naming committee can contact the district office at (262) 642-6710.
Welding stations
The board heard from representatives from Miron Construction and it’s HVAC contractor and Hastings Air Energy Control about the air exchange system for the shop areas in the new construction at the high school. At issues is the increased cost of adding six more welding stations to the six that were already planned in the project.
Because the HVAC system was designed for only six welding stations and the air handler is already on the site for that part of the project, a way to increase the air handling capacity to accommodate six additional stations has presented some problems. Still, getting a hold of the items needed for the project should be the least of the worries – services like wesellfans.com exist that can connect those in charge of the system to those making the parts, after all.
The representatives from the companies were asked to come back with the cost for using a filtering system, which Hastings said could be done instead of a fresh air system, but Miron said wasn’t optimal. The board members wanted to know what the cost will be for both options along with a break down of what the savings would be using a filtering system, which wouldn’t have to heat the outside air during the colder months in a fresh air exchange system.
The board scheduled a special meeting at 6 p.m. tonight to review the information from the companies and hopefully make a decision on to whether or not they are going to add the six additional welding stations immediately or wait. Regardless of if the board chooses to add them now or later, the infrastructure for the shop area is being built to accommodate 12 stations, so they can be added easily at a later date if necessary.
