Construction of a new school building in the Nedrose district keeps getting delayed, said Superintendent Charles Miller.

“It’s not moving fast,” said Miller. “Everything’s taking longer to build and put together … than we would like.”

The school building at 15th Street and 55th Avenue SE in rural Minot will eventually house students in grades 4-12.

The south half of the building, which includes mainly classrooms, is right now expected to be completed by February. The north side of the building, which includes the gymnasium, science area and vocational agriculture classroom, should be finished later in the spring, Miller said.

Miller said he hopes that the school district will be able to move students in grades 6-12 to a portion of the building by early February and fourth- and fifth-graders to the school by April. Kindergarteners through third-graders will remain at the original school site. Miller said the district will make some renovations of the old school, though not many, to better accommodate the youngest students.

The new school building was originally supposed to be completed by August 2015. That completion date was pushed back to Halloween and then to around Valentine’s Day of this year.

Miller said the general contractor, Northwest Contracting, has not given any specific reason for the delay. He also said there is no clause in the contract that requires the contractor to pay a penalty if the project is not completed by a certain date.

Voters approved an $18 million bond issue to pay for the school project in early 2014. Miller said the cost of the school has increased to about $22 million, higher than initial projections. Nedrose will not see a big school tax hike this year, said Miller, though they did see their taxes go up last year to pay for the project.

Nedrose, which had been a K-8 district until this year, had been paying tuition for its high school students to attend high school in nearby Minot or Surrey. This school year, about 74 high school students began attending classes at the original elementary school site at 6900 U.S. Highway 2 East. Miller said the district has been making due with portable classrooms on the site. The district hired about 20 additional teachers for the high school.

About 25 students residing in the Nedrose district chose to continue attending Surrey High School and another 50 Nedrose students continue to attend Minot High School. Miller said the high school is expected to grow to 150 students in another couple of years. The South Prairie school district also opened a new high school this school year after years of being a K-8 district.

Nedrose High School freshmen McKayla Chilson and Tiffany Allen both said they are looking forward to attending classes in the new high school building when it is completed.

“I thought this year was going to be somewhat bad because we weren’t in the new building,” said Allen, who attended the school in the early elementary years and then returned as a ninth-grader. She said the experience has turned out to be better than she expected.

Both girls said they enjoy being with their friends.

Miller said a smaller high school will give students opportunities they might not have at a larger high school like Minot High, such as the ability to participate in a greater number of extracurricular activities. Most high school students are involved in at least one activity, he said.

The school district offers six or seven different classes, including foreign language classes, via interactive television and an educational consortium. The district has not been able to offer vocational agriculture classes this year but will have that program in place during the next school year, said Miller.

Miller said he has also not received many complaints about the delay in completing the high school.

“They’ll get there eventually,” he said. “They know the good is coming.”