Coal City Unit 1 leaning toward repairing roof, wall on intermediate school

Superintendent Chris Spencer told the Coal City Unit 1 School Board Wednesday that from the feedback and conversations stemming from town hall meetings, the district will spend $196,679 repairing the north gymnasium at City Intermediate School.

Coal City Intermediate School students are spending this school year and potentially next school year at Coal City Elementary after maintenance discovered a growing crack in the north gym wall in October. The district will be repairing the 8,300 square foot space, including replacing the truss system and repairing the north wall.

“We feel like moving forward with fixing the roof and fixing that wall, keeping everything how it is, might be in the best interest of the district,” Spencer said. “I feel, I still think it’s in our best interest that we get a committee together and start looking toward the future. This puts us in line with what we had the board set up already where, once we had a new Dresden agreement, we can look at what we’re going to do with the Intermediate School.”

Board member Jeff Emerson said he has a difficult time with the numbers being thrown out to fix a 100-year-old building. Renovation costs, according to a Jan. 18 Morris Herald-News article, would be between $300 and $500 per square foot to renovate the school and between $450 and $650 to build a new school.

Emerson said the district needs to accelerate their timeline to build a new school. He understands that the building has history and the fact that people are on a fixed income. Emerson still believes the district needs to start planning for new construction now.

“The longer you wait, the more it’s going to cost to build a new school,” Emerson said. “To put millions of dollars into a building that’s 100 years old, that we pay our architects to say ‘yeah, you could fix this,’ but that’s not saying that the next problem won’t happen.”

According to a Friday news release, future renovations or demolition plans remain on the district’s long-range facility plan and will be revisited once a decision is made on the relicensing of Dresden Generating Station and the property tax agreement that follows.

The board also directed Spencer to request bids for renovations at the elementary school to update the electrical and mechanical systems. The board is also interested in temporary modular classroom and office spaces.

The district said in the news release that it has filed an insurance claim to cover the costs, and it’s going to appeal the carrier’s limited coverage to seek full funding of repairs. Repairs will be funded through health/life safety reserves and proceeds from the working cash bonds acquired in Nov. 2023.