The Washoe County School District recently approved the construction contract to Q&D Construction to build the John Bohach Elementary School in Spanish Springs, designed by H&K Architects. The new elementary school is set to be modeled after the Nick Poulakidas Elementary School currently being built in South Reno set to open to this fall. Q&D Construction and H&K Architects also worked together on that project.
The 86,000-sq.-ft. school will help relieve overcrowding from other schools and will include state-of-the-art equipment and features that are flexible for a changing learning environment. The rooms are designed to allow every student to have a tablet or learning device and the server capacity to allow everyone to be on them at once. There will also be maker spaces catered to promoting STEM lesson plans (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) and the WCSD is working with individual schools to design features that cater to their specific needs.
“We’re working with the schools to figure out what will work for folks and what can change with the times,” says WCSD Spokesman Riley Sutton. The idea is to have built-in flexibility- for instance, having water and gas hookups in a chemistry lab, but no permanent fixtures so that the space can easily be converted into an art or science classroom.
According to a WCSD press release, 85 percent of the subcontractors working on the project are local.
The John Bohach Elementary School, named after the Reno police officer who was killed in the line of duty in 2001, is located next to Sky Ranch Middle School on 1200 Windmill Farms Parkway that will open to students this fall. WCSD contractors were able to get a roof on the building before the major winter storms and have been working on the interior. It is designed to hold 1400 students well above who will be attending but built to accommodate a growing community in future years.
“All signs are a go for construction to be done (on Sky Ranch) to open the start of the (August 2019) school year,” Sutton says.
Rezoning will help with the overcrowding in the current schools and students who are about to graduate from their current school will have the priority to be grandfathered into the new schools without having to go through the rezoning process.
Construction on the new John Bohach Elementary School is set to begin in the next few months and is designed to hold a maximum of 725 students. Its projected opening is fall of 2020.
“We’re really excited about this one; it’s one of the many projects we have going on, but this one is made possible by the voters who voted it in back in 2016. We’re so appreciative of being able to do what we said we’re going to do with those funds, and we hope the parents and community will be happy,” Sutton adds.
For more information on the Sky Ranch Middle School opening this fall, visit https://www.washoeschools.net/skyranch. To see renditions of what the John Buhach Elementary School will look like, visit http://www.wcsdbuilding.com/elementary-school-south-meadows/ .
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