After years of discussions among the members of the local district school board, voters in Grand Junction, Colorado will finally get to decide on the question of whether they want to see built a brand new high school.
The current Grand Junction High School was opened in 1956 and is in rough shape. “Woeful, decrepit, and obsolete,” a columnist of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel recently put it. “Anyone that’s spent time in that building could surely conjure up additional adjectives to describe it.”
Problems with the structure include classrooms with no windows, sagging floors, and more than two dozen entry and exit points—a greater safety concern today than when the structure was originally built.
On top of everything else, the school has also suffered at times from both rodent and cockroach infestation.
The new school would cost $124 million to build, and would be folded into a larger $189 million bond that would also fund repairs to three other existing high schools.
Proponents of Proposal 4A feel particularly hopeful regarding the November ballot, considering that voters in District 51, which takes in all of Mesa County, approved a similar bond proposal in late 2017 designed to fund the construction of a new middle school.
As proposed, the new high school, with a single point of entry and exit, would include classrooms, gymnasium, auditorium, studio, and both lab and office space.
If approved, construction on the new high school would begin sometime next year on the north side of the current high school’s campus at 1400 N. 5th Street.
Upon completion of the new school in the fall of 2022, the existing school will be demolished.
By Garry Boulard
