The Stroud School Board voted last week to approve a $1.4 million visitor’s locker room to be located at the football field.
Superintendent Joe Van Tuyl said they’ve been working on the development for some time, and he doesn’t see it as a large undertaking.
“We had available finances. There was an evaluation of ‘Is this a need?’ And is it something to be positive? There’s some disagreement about that. But at the end of the day, it was approved to move ahead with it,” he said, adding that it was well-vetted.
He continued that the district has strong resources, with many of those in the general fund. Van Tuyl called the project relatively small, though construction costs are high, which the superintendent said is a normal progression.
Construction is set to start within the next month, with completion set by mid-July or early August, Van Tuyl said, well before football season starts.
It’s planned to be a standard dressing room.
Currently, the locker room used by visiting teams is across the parking lot, where it’s been for years.
“One of the reasons we pursued this was to have our visitors closer to the field and before games and half times and even after games, to not have to intermingle with the public on the way to their area,” Van Tuyl said.
He also explained that the approach they take with all their facilities, starting with the Coliseum built in 2013, is to allow for expanded use. He said the visiting locker room would be used by the high school team, middle school, and the little league program, making it well utilized.
“Our intent with all our facilities is to use them for many potential things. After hours here for various facilities, we have after school with their basketball practices going on. In football season, there’s little league football practices,” he said. “And our facilities will be used till 8 and 9 o’clock. And then those same entities will use our facilities on the weekends for their games and so forth.”
However, the decision has faced some disagreement within the school board and from parents. School board member Holly Thompson voted against the project, saying that they currently have a balance of $2.9 million in the building fund and the project would cut that in half. She added that she’s been hearing from her constituents that they wish the school district would have prioritized other needs.
“In the last year, we’ve also made significant investments to the football program’s facilities. And I really feel my constituents have voiced many other strategic priorities for improving our education and other programs for Stroud students that would have probably benefited more from the use of that amount of money at this time,” she said.
She gave examples of creating an upper elementary school or new playground equipment, along with many others. Thompson also said that if the project had come up later on after working in other areas, she likely would have voted yes.
“From a prioritization standpoint for me, like it was the wrong time. Not that I wouldn’t support that at some point in the future, but to me, there are other strategic priorities that needed to, and investments that needed to be made before that one,” Thompson said.
Stroud parent Kreg Hilbert said he is a proud supporter of Stroud football and believes there is a need for a visitor’s locker room, but questioned the price tag. He also felt other things should have been prioritized over the locker room, such as an expanded Parkview Elementary, updated playground equipment, lights on the track field, stadium seating for the track field, a wrestling room, updates to the Special Ed program, and more.
“I have a lot of conversations with the leaders of our community, and had known the visitor locker room was being talked about. Not really knowing the plan was to build a $1.4 million dollar one though,” he said.