Work can now finally get started on a duel cafeteria building for elementary and middle school students in the Eureka Springs School District.
At a special called meeting on Friday, May 19, the school board approved a bid of $4.4 million for a new cafeteria that will have one centralized kitchen and separate cafeteria spaces for students at the two schools to have meals.
“It’ll be a 10,000-square-foot kitchen,” Superintendent Bryan Pruitt said. “We’ll be able to feed the elementary on one side and the middle school on the other side.”
Currently, meals for the two schools are made in a dated kitchen at the elementary school. Food is then packaged and packed and transported to the middle school where they are served to the students.
“It allows us to have a better menu for our students,” Pruitt said. “We can prepare more scratch-type meals since we’re not going to be packing meals, moving them and then unpacking them. It’s a win-win for the school.
“It’s going to be a nice facility that I think the community is going to be really proud of, and we’re just glad to be able to do it for our students number one and our community number two.”
Pruitt said the bid originally came in at $5 million but the district was able to get it lowered by $600,000.
“We were able to get it lowered without having any danger to the integrity of the buildings,” he said.
The district has the money to pay for the project outright, Pruitt said.
“We are not asking for any millage increase,” he said. “We’ve saved for the money. There’s no secondary lien or bond or anything. We saved for it and we’re going to be able to pay for it.”
The project will likely begin within the next couple of weeks and will take 10-12 months to complete, the superintendent said, adding that he expects the building ready to be used for the 2024-2025 school year.
“This project is not for anything other than for the kids of Eureka and for them to be able to have good hot meals,” Pruitt said. “It’s going to be a great addition to our community.”
The current elementary kitchen will be transitioned into offices and a new “calming room” for the district’s therapists, Pruitt said.
FLOOR PROJECT APPROVED
Also at the special meeting, the board approved a project to replace half of the flooring at the middle school.
“We’ll do the other half next year,” Pruitt said.
The current flooring requires stripping and waxing but the new flooring will be vinyl tiles.
