This summer, the school district broke ground on a new addition to the east side of the Jr./Sr. High School. While the addition itself is modest and “nothing glamorous,” Daggett said, it is the launching pad for future improvements on the building.

“Our junior/senior high kind of needs some work all over,” he said. “We’re still working on the design costs for the rest of the building, but nothing could happen from a renovation standpoint until we got more electrical capacity, so that prompted this small addition now.”

The east addition project will include a new electrical room with electrical panels. It will also add some dressing rooms for behind the auditorium stage, as well as extending the band room.

“This is the beginning of additional projects in the future,” Daggett said.

Those future projects include adding additional classrooms, upgrading the office and commons area, and building a new wrestling room.

“Right now, our weight room and our wrestling room are detached, they’re about 150 feet away from the building, where the locker rooms are at,” Daggett said. “Eventually, we’d like to add onto the south side of the building to include a new wrestling room and weight room and a locker room renovation. But none of that can happen until we solve the electrical capacity problem, which prompted this project.”

The recent rains have slowed the progress of the construction some, but the contractors are still hoping to have it complete by fall 2024.

The addition was designed by Allers Associates Architects and is being built by Jensen Builders Ltd., both of Fort Dodge.

“It’s exciting,” Daggett said of the east addition project. “It’s a relatively small step, but at the same time it’s a big step for us as a district to spend this kind of money on improvement projects.

The $2.65 million project was paid for using funds collected from the sales tax, he said.

“The exciting part is this is the beginning of hopefully additional projects in the future to create, for our students and our community, top-notch facilities for our district,” Daggett said.