S3 committee identifies four potential FHS sites

During its June 23 meeting, the Fremont Public Schools Board of Education received a report from the Strategies for Student Success (S3) Facilities Committee.

The board had previously received year-end reports from the other S3 committees, including the World Ready, the Technology and the Community Connections committees.

At the onset of the 2007-08 school year, Fremont Public Schools officials asked people in the community to help answer the question: “How do we prepare students to be world ready?”

Survey responses came in and committees were formed to study the information and make recommendations to the school board, following a year of discussion and research.

S3 Facilities Committee member Dave Byrne made the presentation to the board, beginning with a quick review of the committee’s process. According to Byrne, the committee began its discussions by developing a master plan for the district, focusing on needed repairs and areas of improvement. The Fremont High School facility was identified as the number one area needing improvement.

Byrne said that the need for vast changes and improvements in the high school facility was so apparent, the committee decided to divide into subcommittees and study the possibilities for updating the facility. Each subcommittee ended up studying not only the existing high school, but also possible sites for a new facility. In the end, four possible areas were identified by the committee, including the current high school location, property north of NCRESA, a site on the current middle school property, and on the fairgrounds’ property.

Byrne informed the board that all four sites had been evaluated to make sure a facility would be feasible. He reported that all four locations proved to be suitable for a facility, each with minor drawbacks of its own. Based on this information, Byrne then asked the board to allow the Facilities Committee to continue meeting outside the S3 realm, authorizing the committee to pursue feedback regarding the possibility of a new high school facility and the four possible locations identified by the committee.

Unanimously, members of the school board authorized the committee to move forward in gathering input, asking for a recommendation by December of this year.