School tours getting good marks

 The third tour of the Red Oak School district’s school facilities took place at Inman Primary School last week. 

Inman is one of the district’s newer buildings. Built in 1960, a 62,922-square-foot addition was added in 2001. Alley Poynter Macchietto architect Daric O’Neal said Inman is the most efficient among the schools, but minor upgrades would help.

 “It lacks a fire sprinkler system, and isn’t required to have one. However, if we’re going to do that work at the other schools, or add to the building to bring over a grade, one of the possibilities would be to look at installing a sprinkler system at that time,” O’Neal said. 

Attendance at the public tours to look at school facilities could also use some improvement. O’Neal said 30 people toured the middle school, 25 the high school, and only 20 at the Inman tour.

“It’s a lower attendance than what I was hoping for, but I imagine we’ll hold more tours after we get some of the concepts flushed through in the master planning process of what could happen at some of these buildings,” he said. “Once people get something tangible to start talking about, I think it will create more interest in looking more closely at the buildings.”

“Most people have said the buildings are nice and very clean,” O’Neal said.

Opening the buildings for the tours has had a positive impact. 

“We had 10 people tour Inman that weren’t at the high school and middle school. The building is fairly new, so a lot of people’s children haven’t attended here. It’s been good for everyone who’s attended to see the states of each of these buildings.”

Red Oak resident Jim Dunbar, who was unable to attend the high school and middle school buildings, but did tour Inman, said he had yet to decide his feelings on the master plan. 

“I need to get closer to it. If we can refurbish, that’s probably what we ought to do. It comes down to how much money we need to spend versus how much we have to spend,” Dunbar said. “If we spend it, what will it do for us?” 

Dunbar said he’s pleased with the openness of the district on the project. 

“The good thing this time around is that we’ll have a lot more of the community involved, which is what it needs. I think the community felt, the last time around, that right or wrong, the district was trying to take the easy way out.”