The year 2014 brought unprecedented student growth at school districts in the area. With that growth came the addition of new buildings at area districts, including Minot, Bishop Ryan Catholic School, Nedrose and South Prairie, among others.

Minot Public School District voters approved a $39.5 million bond issue in April 2014 that will fund construction of two new school additions at Edison and Perkett elementaries, a new elementary school in southeast Minot, and safety and security improvements at all Minot schools.

The bond vote in April was held within months of a defeated $125 million bond issue in December 2013 that would have also paid for a second high school and conversion of Central Campus into a third middle school.

Even though voters turned down the larger bond issue, Superintendent Mark Vollmer said in December that the increased growth at the middle school and high school level likely means that the district will have to revisit that issue sooner rather than later.

“We as a district are continuing to grow,” said Vollmer.

He said a demographic study conducted a couple of years ago accurately predicted the number of elementary students the district would have by this year but was off about the middle school and high school enrollments.

“We are growing more quickly at the middle school and high school levels,” said Vollmer.

As of November, there were more than 1,100 freshmen and sophomores enrolled at Central Campus and nearly 1,000 juniors and seniors at Magic City Campus.

In the meanwhile, work is progressing on a school addition at Edison Elementary. The foundation has been laid and pre-formed walls will be erected soon. Vollmer said the district is looking at “value engineering” to see what cost-saving measures can be taken with the new classroom addition. That might involve using a less expensive floor covering where possible, for instance, he said.

Cost-cutting options are somewhat limited by the district’s need for more space, though, he said.

“It’s not an option to make these buildings smaller,” he said.

Vollmer said construction costs are also considerably higher in western North Dakota than they are in the eastern part of the state. Where a school building in Fargo can be built for about $175 per square foot, the recently completed new Erik Ramstad Middle School in Minot was completed at about $265 per square foot, said Vollmer. He said farther west, the going construction rate is an even higher $300 per square foot.

“It’s our job as a school district to get the best use out of the project that we can,” said Vollmer, keeping in mind that the district is limited to $39.5 million for all the approved projects.

The Edison addition is scheduled to be completed by the fall of 2015.

The Perkett classroom addition and the new elementary in southeast Minot will be bid out early next year and are scheduled to be completed by the fall of 2016, said Vollmer.

At Nedrose, a rural Minot school district that has traditionally been a K-8 district, voters approved an $18 million bond issue last year for construction of a new high school, but project delays have pushed back the construction date.

The original plan was to have the building completed by the start of the 2015-2016 school year, but Superintendent Charles Miller said the completion date has now been pushed back to November 2015.

High school students in the district will be starting their school year in portable classrooms located at the elementary site and will move to the new high school, which will be located about one mile from the elementary at the intersection of 15th Avenue and 55th Avenue Southeast, later in the fall. Miller said the Nedrose district does not plan to pay tuition for its high school students to attend classes in other school districts next year. Most students from Nedrose have attended Minot or other surrounding school districts, with Nedrose paying tuition for them to attend.

The Minot school board also plans to discuss whether to continue to accept high school students from outside the district with or without tuition payments.

Miller said the cost of the project has also gone up and is likely to cost around $22 to $24 million instead of the $18 million that had been approved by Nedrose voters.

The board will have to find the additional funding to pay for the project somewhere, said Miller.

Miller said the new high school is needed. Like other schools, Nedrose has grown. There are currently about 360 kindergarteners through eighth graders attending school at Nedrose.

South Prairie, a rural K-8 district located about 10 miles south of Minot, is also building a new high school after voters approved a $12 million bond issue in December 2013.

Superintendent Wayne Stanley said the completion date for the new high school addition is still July 1, 2015.

“We’ll offer a full K-12 next year, “said Stanley.

The district is requiring students who will be freshmen and sophomores in the 2015-2016 school year to attend classes at South Prairie High School during the next school year and will also welcome back any juniors and seniors who plan to attend school there. Stanley said he anticipates that the high school will have about 60 students to start out.

The district is hiring staff and getting its digital curriculum online in preparation for the 2015-2016 school year, said Stanley. Stanley said teachers and students are excited about the new high school.

At Bishop Ryan Catholic School, students and teachers moved into a new classroom addition in April 2014, said superintendent Terry Voiles.

The classroom wing is intended as a primary wing, with two classrooms for preschool, two for kindergarten and eventually two for first grade. The classroom addition also includes the principal’s office, receptionist area and faculty lounge.

Voiles said the addition was needed because of ongoing growth. The school had been crowded since the 2011 flood, when the Catholic school moved the primary grades from the flooded Little Flower Elementary over to Bishop Ryan.

The district also renovated much of the existing school building. The high school science lab was completely redone and the home economics room was converted into a middle school science lab. The school also turned two classrooms into computer labs. Carpeting was added and walls were repainted.

“Really, as you go through the school I’m not sure there’s a room that has not been completely upgraded,” said Voiles.

The addition and upgrades were paid for with a capital campaign that also created an endowment to boost teacher salaries at Ryan.

Voiles said enrollment at the Catholic school is, like at the Minot Public Schools, on the upswing.