Story by Adam Leaming, Ponca City Public Schools/Contributing Writer
An Ambitious 2022 Plan! January is here and your local school district is in high gear to welcome back teachers, students, and our support staff. We want to kick start 2022 with a bang, and we have laid out ambitious goals for the upcoming calendar year. How ambitious? We will be kicking off sixteen (16) different projects over the next twelve months. These projects are not inclusive of all the work the district does on an annual basis but are some of the larger projects you will see as an engaged citizen in our community.
When our bond issue passed on October 12th, the real work urgently kicked off. We’ve been and are still actively designing and meeting multiple times each week to bring these projects from dreams to reality. Now that it’s January we’re ready to roll with three projects at the conclusion of the school year in May. You will see work kicking off at Lincoln, Union, and the high school this summer. Lincoln and Union are set to receive a number of refreshes including bathrooms, flooring, and quality of life upgrades for our students and staff. Each of these projects have been identified through extensive needs assessments and input from students, staff, and the community. Before we even get into summer you will see dirt work this spring to build a new pad site for the Garfield Elementary playground. This project will help with water drainage from the building to the detention pond while allowing us to finally get Garfield a playground built for their students behind their school. Speaking of playgrounds, our hope is that each of the elementary schools and Pre-K center will have their playgrounds installed and ready to go by the first day of school in August. Design work
60 January 2022
is ongoing on this project, and we’re hoping we can kick this project off as soon as regular warm temperatures return to Ponca City. Eight new playground structures with a soft solid poured in place surfacing are set to be purchased and installed for each of our youngest students in Ponca City to enjoy in the fall. The high school will see a flurry of activity as we’re poised to refresh half of the bathrooms over the summer, with the remaining restrooms to be refreshed in 2023. These bathrooms will bring a much-needed face lift to the services we have available for our students. In addition to bathrooms, the high school commons will have new glass installed in the commons to go with new flooring. The tile floor from the late 90s will be going away and a new flooring design will add dimension and increase the visual appeal of our commons area. The Anderson building will begin its complete interior demolition as we prepare to rebuild an amazing new STEM area for our high school students to enjoy by August of 2024. New fire alarm upgrades and a new intercom system are set to be deployed throughout the high school and campus. Other notable projects that will kickoff this year in our school district will be in late fall of 2022 and they include our Concert Hall classroom addition and the dirt work of our indoor multipurpose facility and new turfed athletic field. Both of these projects will add additional square footage that the district can utilize to serve students. Our aim is to serve our students and the citizens of Ponca City. I take a great deal of pride in our facilities and the individuals charged to help us maintain them. We strive to create facilities that work for our students and staff. In 2022, our goal is to continue with that focus as we break ground on each of these new projects for our community.
