Students and faculty will have to adapt to construction taking place in the next couple of years.
Dr. David Kelly, Nixa High School principal, said they are planning on expanding the fine arts hallway. In spite of all of these changes, every teacher and student will still have a place to go.
“Band, choir and theater are all going to have to go somewhere,” Kelly said. “They will actually move up to the third floor while we renovate those rooms.”
The performing arts hallway is not the only thing that will be changing. While the space around the auditorium will be in renovation, there are plans to renovate the third floor as well.
A lot of the plans for the lecture hall are preliminary, and have not yet been approved by the school board.
“What will happen is it will either stay a lecture hall or it will be converted into classrooms,” Kelly said. “If it stays a lecture hall, then we will convert that area where the shell is to all classrooms. If we choose to convert it into classrooms, then we will put a lecture hall in where that shell is.”
If everything goes as planned, by Thanksgiving they will have shut down the hall where band, choir and theater are to start renovating the performing arts hallway.
“We will renovate the third floor space at the same time that they start to build the auditorium,” Kelly said. “When that auditorium is done, they are going to renovate that entire hall.”
The timeline for all of these projects is subject to change.
“When you do big construction projects, it’s always hard to have a definite time frame, but hopefully two years from right now it will all be wrapped up,” Kelly said. “This spring we will start on the auditorium so you’ll have the performing arts center.”
In order to start renovations for the fine arts classrooms, the third floor renovations will have to be finished.
“They’ll finish the third floor, which will add six additional classrooms, and then a lecture hall,” Kelly said. “Once that’s finished, band, choir and theater will move up there while they will renovate the current band, theater and choir rooms.”
The short term pains that the students and faculty may experience from renovations will be outweighed by the end product.
“They’re all just really excited and understand that at the end of the day, there’s going to be a better product, and that’s what really matters,” Kelly said.
Kelly hopes that everyone affected by the changes will adapt, and when it is all finished there will be a bigger and better space.
“Next year is going to be kind of a weird year because of that construction, but at the same time it’s going to be something that will be worth it,” Kelly said.