Box Elder board approves $15.6 million contract to expand Discovery Elementary

The Box Elder School District board voted to approve a $15,567,895 guaranteed maximum price (GMP) contract with Hughes General Contractors to expand Discovery Elementary and remodel portions of the existing building.

The contract covers an addition that district staff said will add 12 new classroom spaces (a net gain of about 10 after removing two portables), two specialty rooms (preschool and a functional-skills classroom), additional itinerant offices and conference space, more staff restrooms, and a standalone gym designed to seat the whole school. Playground work was not included in the GMP and will be budgeted later.

Business administrator Neil Stevens told the board the bid tabulation and contingencies put the project at about $15.6 million. “Given all that, that’s what we’re at. We’re about $15.6 million,” Stevens said during the presentation, and he later advised the board that roughly $2 million of the amount is attributable to adding air conditioning in the new addition and an estimated $300,000–$400,000 to add fire sprinklers and bring the rest of the building up to current code.

District architects described construction choices intended to improve long-term efficiency and durability, including insulated concrete form (ICF) construction for the new addition. Staff said the addition will create classroom clusters around a common area and provide space for counseling, speech and other itinerant services that are currently constrained.

Board members debated how to pay for the project. Neil Stevens said the district currently holds roughly $28 million in capital funds and that paying for the entire Discovery project from cash would deplete a large portion of that fund and limit the district’s ability to fund other projects such as HVAC, sewer investigations, routine maintenance and bus purchases. “If we were to take the cost of this build $15 million, we would deplete half of our capital fund,” Stevens said. He also explained the district followed a bidding process with the general contractor and subcontracts and included contingencies where bid scopes required clarification.

Several public commenters had urged the board to seek a voter-approved financing path rather than a lease or other borrowing mechanism. In public comment preceding the vote, resident Sheena Hansen urged the board not to “enter into a lease purchase agreement with Bank of America for $55 million” to build multiple schools, saying that approach appeared to avoid voter review. “This is essentially smoke and mirrors to avoid the legalities of going into debt,” Hansen said during public comment, and she cited a statute number (transcript text “53G4401”) while urging the board to pursue grants or a smaller, voter-approved general-obligation bond.

Board members who spoke during the floor debate took different positions on timing and financing. Some members stressed the urgency of relieving overcrowding at Lake View and other elementary schools and favored proceeding quickly; others urged the board to pursue a public vote or to use existing unencumbered capital funds for any projects it could afford without exhausting reserves. Business administrator Stevens and other staff said approving the construction contract did not itself commit the board to a specific financing vehicle; if a future financing plan is not approved, the board said it would need to revisit payment and schedule options.

The motion to approve the Discovery Elementary GMP was put to a voice vote; the motion passed and the board authorized staff to move forward with the contract and construction preparations. The board did not record a detailed roll-call tally for the item in the public transcript.

Next steps listed by staff include finalizing playground designs and confirming financing arrangements before major draws on capital reserves.