CENTER – Superintendent for the Center Consolidated School District, Carrie Zimmerman, was all smiles talking about breaking ground on the district’s expansion project. 

“It’s exciting. We hired architects last summer; this all started in July of 2024. We started having conversations and obtaining public input on what we needed in our school. We identified that we needed this addition to our district. We have just been pushed for space, which is a good thing. Our numbers have increased, and with all the additional support services that we have including councilors, parental community liaisons, and people that are working on grants. We just have a lot of additional support services in place, and we have run out of room.” 

 Zimmerman stated that even for other support services, including speech therapy and other services that were being provided as one on one for kids, the school was literally cleaning out closets and rooms, to figure out how to accommodate everything. 

“We have now officially broken ground on this expansion project, we are about 3 months behind schedule with what we wanted to do timewise, we were hoping to break ground in October, but we are on our way and looking forward to our new addition.”  

Zimmerman stated that the idea behind the expansion came when she spoke with the board, and they recognized that the need for an additional expansion was necessary to facilitate new classrooms. 

“We had added two modular buildings during the COVID, which was good, it increased our classrooms by four, four more classrooms and four more office spaces, but in talking to the board we still needed more classroom space, and that was our priority.” 

Zimmerman said with the new addition there would be an additional four classroom spaces added.  

Zimmerman also stated that the need for another meeting room was identified as necessary too. 

“We have our community room that is attached to the library. This room is used for everything, board meetings, we have community requests to use that a lot, any type of conference meetings, most of them happen here. We have even held classrooms in there as well.” 

Zimmerman said she wanted an additional meeting space, as the need for one was apparent, so there will be a new meeting space in the expanded building too.  

Zimmerman also mentioned that the school provides many additional community services via Parks and Recreation, after school programs, and peewee programs. The board and Zimmerman both saw a need for an additional gym, so the new building will also include another gym.  

Zimmerman stated that the entire project would cost about $4 million, but the nice thing about the expansion project was that the school had done good budgeting and had some money in reserve that they could use for the expansion, according to Zimmerman, rather than trying to piggyback the money off any taxpaying dollars 

 Zimmerman said they could also take out an unsecured loan that would not affect the district or put them at risk, which is why there was no need to vote on it. The school then hired Spencer Architect, took bids and Alcon Construction for the expansion. 

The expansion building is being placed where a parking lot used to be at the school, Zimmerman stated that although the parking lot was used, it was not used a lot and that is why the decision was made to place the building in that area just south of their alternative school.  

The expansion project is in full swing, and although Zimmerman hoped it would be completed by the new school year in August, she anticipates it being completed around November of 2025.  

Superintendent Zimmerman thanks Spencer Architecture Studio, LLC-Don Spencer, Suzette Sosa Valle, Maria Zielinski, Amenah Mahammed and Alcon Construction.  Marshall Tringham, Mike Heimsoth, and Kerry Smith. She also would like to thank the staff of the school, and everyone who has been involved in helping support this project.