3 min. read
Like many districts across the nation, Clinton-Graceville-Beardsley (CGB) Schools faced aging facilities, significant deferred maintenance, operational challenges, and difficult financial decisions. What began as an HVAC upgrade to improve indoor air quality in classrooms quickly revealed a broader need to evaluate facility conditions across the entire district.
CGB Schools, Independent School District #2888, serves approximately 400 students from pre-K through 12th grade across three rural communities in Big Stone County, Minnesota. Watch the video to learn how the district addressed its facility challenges and plans for long-term improvement.
Transcript:
Brad Kelvinton, CGB, Superintendent: Our collaboration with SitelogIQ in the community turned out to be the reason I believe that we were fortunate to pass the referendum.
Courtany Maanum, CGB, Community Advisory Team Member, Alumni, and Parent: The SitelogIQ team was great. They wanted us to be able to say exactly what we felt the entire time. They made it very clear that our communities were important to them. They wanted us to succeed.
Brad: It started out as an HVAC project to give the current school building some new air. The quality of air was not good. Then we started looking deeper into all of the buildings and found that the building in Clinton had lots of issues that we could not solve without a lot of money.
Matt Helgerson, SIQ, VP of Business Development: The specific steps that were taken in this particular project were first to get a baseline for the entire district by looking at both buildings and examining their physical, educational, and functional needs. Then we put costs to those needs. We also went through a process called ideation with students and staff to generate their ideas about the spaces they needed to educate students here at Clinton-Graceville-Beardsley into the future.
Scott Mahoney, CGB, School Board Chair and Parent: They went through the process of analyzing the school and gave us their proposals on the things that were outdated. I think ultimately that was a really big turning point for me. They brought the community into the school decision-making process, and for me that was the best thing. It gives their fingerprint on the school district, and they’re going to look at that and say, “I had a hand in that,” which I think is awesome.
Courtany: Through this process, SitelogIQ and the admin team really taught us how referendums work, how schools are funded, what happens in our district, what our facilities are currently like, and what they could be.
Matt: Some of the add-ons to the school building, when it’s all said and done, will offer preschool all the way through 12th-grade instruction, special education spaces with dedicated areas, a secure entryway, a gymnasium with multi-purpose space, a fitness area, as well as career and technical education space.
Courtany: I am so excited for our district and our kids. SitelogIQ did such a good job of representing our communities. The school district is the unifying factor between us all. It’s a really great community to be a part of. It’s not just one community. It’s all of us together.