The committee tasked with developing a plan to expand Jefferson City's schools on Tuesday put the final touches on the two-hour presentation they want to share with the public next month.
Officially known at the Long Range Facility Planning Committee, the group has scheduled their presentation for 7-9 p.m. Oct. 21 at Lewis and Clark Middle School. They are expecting as many as 200 people to attend the session.
The group has been working since last fall with the architectural firm ACI Boland to devise a 20-year plan for expansion of facilities.
For several months members have weighed three main ideas for solving overcrowding issues at the high school.
The task force plans to present its main recommendation - renovating the existing JCHS campus and building a new senior high on land east of Missouri 179 - but they also want to explain the two alternate concepts they contemplated and rejected, mainly because they were deemed too expensive or unpopular with voters already.
The preferred recommendation calls for spending $40 million to renovate the 609 Union St. campus and $76.4 million to build a new high school.
At the elementary and middle school levels, the group is proposing a series of ideas to address space needs for the next 20 years.
Two of those ideas - building a 400-student elementary on the city's east side for $13.8 million and adding 10 classrooms at Callaway Hills Elementary for $5.5 million - are considered "current needs."
Three more ideas are termed "future needs" and wouldn't be built until at least 2019. They include:
• Adding a 400-student elementary on the city's west side for $19.3 million.
• Building a third middle school in Callaway County for $34.4 million.
• Renovating Lewis and Clark and Thomas Jefferson middle schools for $13 million.
At the Oct. 21 town-hall style meeting, listeners will get a chance to hear more about the committee's processes and the district's future demographics.
The plan is to take a straw poll in order to discern which ideas the community might be likely to embrace at the ballot box and which ideas would be received more coolly by voters.
Participants will also be given a chance to weigh in on the committee's work. Organizers are planning to seat people together for small-group discussions, in the hope that people with similar questions will have a chance to report out their comments and concerns and have their queries addressed.
"I would like to try to answer people's burning questions," said Kenny Southwick, the consultant from the architectural firm, ACI Boland, who will facilitate the meeting.
In order to make sure that everyone's questions are ultimately answered - even if it doesn't happen on the eve of Oct. 21 - comment cards will be distributed. Those cards will be collected and answered by either district personnel or committee leaders, with responses returned via the mail, said Southwick.