Often postponed and delayed, the construction of the West Wendover Elementary School was completed last summer, with an open house October 11th. The move for the teachers to the new school happened through December 2016, until Winter vacation. The students actually started at the new school this past January, when they returned from their holiday break.
The project was planned to be $28.5 million included the renovation of the old elementary school to serve as a Junior High. The new West Wendover Elementary school was finally approved by the Elko County School board mid August 2014.
At the time, both board member Cindy Elquist and board chairman Thad Ballard voted against the new school on the grounds that the project was $400,000 over its original $30 million dollar budget. In May of 2014, the board had unanimously rejected bids for the new school.
“Every bid came in over the estimated budget,” Zander explained at the time. “We will have to go back to the drawing board and maybe do some cutting.”
Some of the cutting included slightly shrinking classroom size from 960 square feet to 900 square feet, relocating the main campus thus shortening the access road and cutting out lockers in the new gymnasium. The school is expected to house 750 students in grades first through fifth. The current elementary building will be renovated into a sixth- through eighth-grade middle school.
The two construction companies who bid for the retrofit of the Middle school where way passed what the County was planning to spend, and both bids were rejected a few weeks ago. After going back to the drawing board, this time MBM Construction got the contract, at $6,590,000., or more than six and a half millions. The architects will be from Meridian, just like for the Elementary School.
Pay-as-you-go school tax revenue through the end of fiscal year 2013 was estimated at just over $39 million, according to the five-year plan.
The need for a middle school in West Wendover was acknowledged almost since the West Wendover Jr/Sr high school opened in 1996.
However the project was sidelined in the late 1990’s when the price of gold collapsed and tax revenues in Elko County subsequently plunged. Talk of the new middle began again in the mid 2000’s but again the economy turned sour in the Great Recession and all building projects were put on indefinite hold.
In the meantime West Wendover made due with stopped gap temporary trailers that housed about 50 percent of its elementary students.
