NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Hutchinson USD 308 Superintendent Dr. Dawn Johnson talked to Hutch Post this week about the progress the district is making toward shaping the scope of a future bond vote.
"There's really four areas we're focusing on with the bond," Johnson said. "Creating a sixth through eighth grade middle school environment, really focusing in on early learning. So that zero to three and three to five. How do we take care of three, four and five year olds in the early learning environment? And what's the right environment for them? Daycare, the zero to three, that's a piece we wanna focus on. Then enhancing our elementary schools. We have a little bit of inequities in our elementary school. Some have two gyms, some don't. So then the kitchen becomes a gym. We want to do that and put some storm shelters in there and upgrade our elementary schools. The early learning task force met over the summer and a middle school task force met over the summer. We have one more meeting to wrap up the middle school piece. And at that point then the board has already decided that they would pursue $110 million bond. Now we need to look at all of those different projects and how do they fit within that $110 million. I'm hoping that mid-September, October, we've got that ironed out and we're moving forward."
The actual vote will likely be in 2025.
"I think it'll probably be early spring," Johnson said. "Kind of a late winter, early spring probably is where we'll be."
In addition, the current YMCA building next to the Salthawk Activity Center will revert to USD 308's ownership once it is no longer used as a Y, which will likely happen sometime in the next couple of years, but at this point anything done with that space is not in the scope of the bond.