Price for Northside office renovation approved

School board members took another step towards renovating Northside Elementary School's former library space into administrative offices last week.

Board members approved a guaranteed maximum price of $242,742 for the project during a special meeting on Tuesday. Earlier this month the board approved a construction management contract with Ellingson Contracting of Siloam Springs and BiLD Architects of Fayetteville.

A new library for the elementary school, which serves prekindergarten and kindergarten students, was completed in 2018.

The current project will convert the former 2,000-square-foot library space into an administrative office that will include an airlock front entrance, reception area and offices for the school resource officer, assistant principal, registrar and principal, as well as a conference room, work room, staff restrooms and a break room, architect Michael Spaeth said at the Oct. 15 school board meeting.

Speath, along with David Ellingson and Chris Hobby of Ellingson Contracting, presented the guaranteed maximum price at the Oct. 23 meeting. It includes a $10,000 contingency fund the school district will get back if it is not needed, according to Superintendent Jody Wiggins.

The guaranteed maximum price does not include furniture and fixtures, which is estimated to be around 10 percent of the total cost, Wiggins said.

"The standard is 10 to 20 percent," he said. "We will be closer to 10 percent."

Spaeth's architectural fees were paid when the project first went before the board in 2018, Wiggins said. At the time, the district bid a construction project for the office space along with other construction projects. When bids came back higher than expected, the administrative office project was put on hold.

Wiggins said Ellingson Contracting plans to begin doing plumbing and demolition work over Thanksgiving break while students are out of the building. It is estimated to be complete by the end of February, Spaeth said.

In other business, the school board took the following actions:

• Approved the addition of one full-time bus driver for an additional bus route.

• Approved hiring Alyssa Drager as a seventh grade math teacher to replace Kevin Ault, who submitted his resignation earlier this month.