The Wichita Board of Education has moved its regular meeting room out of North High School.
Earlier this week, school board members began holding their meetings at the district headquarters building at Lincoln and Edgemoor, which is the former Southeast High School.
Crews converted the school’s former library into the new boardroom, which doubles as a staff training room.
The total cost for the project is expected to be $571,000, according to district officials. That amount includes design work, asbestos removal, construction and about $215,000 for new technology.
Superintendent Kelly Bielefeld said audio-visual equipment and other technology in the previous board room was outdated. That room, a lecture hall inside North High, was built as part of the 2000 bond issue.
The new board room is “safer security-wise,” Bielefeld said, as well as accessible for people with wheelchairs or other mobility issues.
“And it will be more economical because we can use the AV equipment five days a week instead of one day a month,” he said.
Bielefeld said technology was reaching “end-of-life” in both the North High board room and the training room.
“To be more efficient — and responding to what we hear our public tell us a lot — we decided to take two spaces and put them into one,” he said. “We were able to upgrade it and invest our resources one time instead of doubling it up in two different spaces.”
