Sweetwater County School District #1 announced it has purchased a pair of buildings totaling roughly 49,000 square feet and about 18 acres near the fairgrounds for approximately $5.5 million to expand career-and-technical education programs.

"We bought this property outright," Superintendent Doctor Libby told trustees during the board meeting. She said the site — described to the board as a 43,000-square-foot primary building and a 6,000-square-foot secondary building — will house large CTE programs such as automotive, welding, woods, CAD, robotics and aviation, with plans to add agriculture. The acquisition, she said, uses district general funds and is separate from the state-funded new-high-school construction.

Libby said the move lets the district double down on CTE instructor capacity, place larger vocational programs off-site, and repurpose about 10,000 square feet in the new high school for athletics and activities. "This is our own general funds," she said, adding that because the state did not provide funding for that purchase, the district retains full control of the property.

The superintendent described expected community benefits: expanded student access to sought-after classes, possible state tournament capacity with new 1,400-seat gyms, and local revenue gains from hosting events that previously required travel to other cities. She also told the board the district has worked with architects and is coordinating traffic and infrastructure work with the city to address drop-off points and parking near adjacent schools.

Trustees and the superintendent addressed several items the district will not delay the high school build for: Libby said a pool or an indoor track could still be pursued via a separate bond, but adding them now would halt the high-school construction timeline. She described how value engineering for the state-funded project is underway and said the board will continue to pursue timely design and construction.

The district did not provide a public timeline for renovations to make the newly purchased facility instructional-ready during the meeting nor a line-item renovation budget. When pressed by public commenters later in the meeting for the contract and renovation cost and schedule, board staff said more details would be shared through follow-up communications and posted materials.

Next steps the superintendent flagged included ongoing conversations with the city on parking variances, submitting the high-school plans to the state value-engineering review in the next week, and public outreach this spring to gather community input as designs are finalized.

The board did not take a formal, separate vote specifically authorizing the purchase during the portion of the meeting recorded in the transcript excerpt; the superintendent described the acquisition as already completed and owned by the district.