Construction and reconstruction will begin at Lee middle and high school this spring. One of the new projects will replace an area of the building which collapsed in 2019 with a new entrance off Havana Street, as well as a new multipurpose area. (Supplied) 
Construction and reconstruction will begin at Lee middle and high school this spring, including enclosing the currently unusable interior courtyard to be used as a cafeteria and other purposes. (Supplied) 
Construction and reconstruction will begin at Lee middle and high school this spring, including a new area which will include a band room. (Supplied) 
Construction and reconstruction will begin at Lee middle and high school this spring, including a new area which will include a band room. (Supplied)
By K.D. Norris
The long saga of a much-anticipated makeover of the Wyoming Lee Middle and High School building will move into high gear early this year as, following the final approval of a general contractor late last year, construction will begin as soon as spring weather allows.
In 2020, Godfrey-Lee Public Schools district voters voted to support a bonding proposal which would allow the district to put out bonds for about $18 million for a wide range of building and facility projects.
At the time, the district not only faced the task of modernizing portions of its middle and high school that are nearly 100 years old, it had to make repairs to a portion of the building which collapsed in 2019. But modernization and repairs are only the most obvious part of the historic and still bustling building.
“As far as the new construction, I am most excited for us to begin to make our facilities worthy of the amazing students that we serve,” Eric Mockerman, district Board of Education president, said to WKTV. “I am (also) happy that our building will be more accessible to our community in multiple ways and it will overall be easier to navigate throughout the facility. I am very excited for the addition of our new band room that will better fit the needs of the phenomenal program that will use that space.”
According to information provided by Dirk Weeldreyer, district interim superintendent, the building effort will be a two-year project, expected to be completed in the 2023-24 school year.
Among the projects are the reconstructed portion of the building along Havana Street in the space where the building collapsed and was demolished. An existing entrance to the gym will be redone, and the area demolished turned into a new media center on the first floor and new classroom spaces on the second floor.
Also planned is a new cafeteria and multi-purpose space that will be built in the area that is currently the unused courtyard of the building. And there will be a new band room addition on the north side of the building.
“Our current construction timeline calls for activity on our new/rebuilt spaces to commence in early spring 2022,” Weeldreyer wrote in an email. “We will need to work from the ‘inside out’ on these new spaces, so the first thing to happen will be excavation and preparation of the interior site (inside the current courtyard).”
There will also be interior renovation work in the existing classroom spaces starting in the summer of 2022, and renovation will continue over the subsequent 18 months or more.
