Region 15 feasibility committee recommends new school complex to address aging elementary buildings

The Regional School District 15 Board of Education on Sept. 8 received a unanimous recommendation from its Gainesville–Poplarock feasibility study committee to build a new school complex — two elementary schools on a single new campus — rather than pursue major renovations of the existing buildings.

The recommendation matters because the district is weighing the educational and financial trade-offs of renovating aging buildings versus constructing new facilities, and because state reimbursement rules and site constraints will shape what the district can afford and where it can build.

Tekton Architects led the feasibility analysis and described a yearlong process of building tours, three public “community conversations,” teacher think-tank sessions and more than a dozen committee meetings that produced several options. Jeff Wazinski, principal at Tekton Architects, told the board the study evaluated existing conditions, programmatic needs and state reimbursement formulas, then modeled renovating-as-new, addition/renovation and new-construction scenarios.

Wazinski said the team’s schedule and state grant timeline would typically put a completed project in the neighborhood of fall 2030 if the district pursues a grant in mid-2026 and follows a four- to five-year delivery timeline. He told the board that “these projects take anywhere from about 4 to 5 years to complete from grant application all the way through to construction completion.”

The feasibility committee’s recommendation — presented to the board by committee members and summarized in a submitted statement from parent and committee member Jason…