March 28, 2024

Board approves engineer for stadium project

The school board also elects not to start its own preschool program at this time.

The first domino has fallen in the process of constructing a new turf field at Creston Community High School.

A civil engineer was unanimously approved by the Creston Community High School Board of Directors during Monday’s special meeting.

Bishop Engineering of Urbandale was approved by the school board to do design work for the stadium project, including designing the drainage underneath the field and the grading necessary on the field.

Bishop Engineering will also attain the appropriate permits for those projects.

“We had three criteria,” CCSD Superintendent Steve McDermott said. “One was that the engineer had completed at least three of these field projects successfully. One was that they could meet our really quick timeline and another was just competitive pricing. That’s how we ended up with Bishop Engineering. They’ve done several fields. They’ve done Norwalk, Waukee, Earlham – several of them.”

McDermott told the school board Bishop Engineering’s quoted price was $20,000 less than what he was expecting.

According to Bishop Engineering’s Facebook page, the company has “directed the bulk of its professional services to the private sector in four separate areas,” which include residential planning, design and construction management; commercial planning and design; industrial planning and design; and land surveying.

Each additional step of the stadium project will need board approval, as well.

The stadium project is one of several major construction projects planned for fiscal year 2019. The others include additional parking at the elementary/middle school and a new playground at the Early Childhood Center.

New visitor’s side bleachers are planned for FY19, but the bigger project is replacing the current grass football field with a FieldTurf field that will accommodate football, soccer, marching band and many other activities.

FieldTurf eliminates a large amount of field maintenance associated with mowing, trimming, fertilizing, aerating, watering, weed control and line painting. It also has proven to be a safer surface than grass.

The FieldTurf project was budgeted at $1.2 million for FY19.

“That will be a larger dollar amount, so that will require a more formal bidding process. The board will have to consider and approve that,” McDermott said. “Right now, we’re still in hopes of having a field completed before this fall season, which means that construction would have to start the day after our last home track meet. A couple of outfits that have contacted me that install fields say there is still time to do it.”

Currently, there are four home track meets scheduled for this spring, with the middle school girls home track meet being the final home meet on Friday, May 4.

Preschool program

McDermott also recommended to the school board during Monday’s special meeting that the district not start a district-hosted preschool program this year.

The discussion arose after the district learned that Creative Beginnings preschool program in Creston planned to close in May.

“We weren’t sure there would be enough open slots for 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds next fall,” McDermott said. “We wanted to make sure everybody had access. The more we studied this, we saw there are several openings available in the existing preschools, so that covered that concern, at least.”

McDermott said multiple families had also contacted the district asking it to start its own program the school because of concerns with some of the programming being offered.

The board decided to hesitate starting its own program and instead work with the preschools while continuing to study the possibility of creating a program in the future.

“Obviously, we wouldn’t be able to start something for this coming fall,” McDermott said. “Timing wise, those decisions need to be made now to have facilities ready and staff ready. Some of the current providers are beginning their enrollment stuff first of February. We wanted to have this discussion before that.”