Schools in the Helena Area are Being Upgraded

by Josh Kuhlman

In the fall of 2019, students at three Helena elementary schools will move into their new, cutting edge schools that are currently under construction.Each schools construction is estimated to cost fourteen million dollars of taxpayer money.

Bryant Elementary School is going to be torn down during the summer of 2019. The new school is going to be three times the size of the old school and is going to hold around 130 more kids. The old Central school was torn down last year; the Central students are currently attending school at the old Lincoln school (now Central-Linc).

The new schools will have new features such as break rooms for students and teachers to collaborate.

Central has a rotation of 4 people working on the new school. The school is mostly going to consist of a glass and brick exterior. According to the school’s principal, John Stilson, Central’s construction was delayed because the of soil mitigation, so they had to dig it all up and put in their own soil. After the conundrum, all they have to do now is put on a roof on the building.

As for Bryant, there are four people overseeing the building of the new school. Gretchen Krumm, the lead architect of Mosaic, the firm that designed the new building, states, that with only four people working on the building “I’m surprised how fast they got [the steel and insulation] done.”

One complication of building Bryant was a sewer drain; instead of it being in multiple sections making it easy to move, they had to cut it up and remove it.

Furthermore, Krumm says, “the views are going to look great.”