Republic readies for $45M Intermediate School opening

The Republic School District is in the homestretch of preparations for its multimillion-dollar new building that will relocate hundreds of students this month to the 124,000-square-foot facility.

The district’s Intermediate School will serve roughly 800 fifth- and sixth-grade students for the 2025-26 school year, with capacity for up to 1,000 to accommodate anticipated growth in the community.

Superintendent Matt Pearce said the facility at 3879 E. Leadership Drive near Highway 60 and James River Freeway, constructed on a 78-acre tract of land the district purchased in late 2022 for $3.6 million, will wrap on schedule and under budget.

The project was the focus of a $47 million bond issue approved by voters in 2023. Pearce said the building construction, as well as the connection of infrastructure such as plumbing, electrical and sewer to the site, will cost around $45 million.

General contractor is Federal Construction Inc. and architects are H Design Group LLC and Kansas City-based Hollis and Miller Architects Inc.

When the district’s academic year starts Aug. 19, roughly 800 students are transitioning to the new building from the middle school and elementaries.

“This has been a welcome reprieve from some crowded situations,” Pearce said about the student shuffle. “We’re excited not only for this building, but also for the middle school and the elementaries to have fewer students in their spaces.”

Amid crews wrapping up interior work on the building Aug. 4, several stacks of black T-shirts labeled “Tiger Town” were piled in the front office. They await teachers and staff as the school’s open house for families and the community is set for Aug. 11. Chris Stallings, who was hired last year to be the facility’s new principal, leads a staff of approximately 80.

“We’re still filling some custodial positions and things like that, but we have about 60 certified staff and then another 20 or so in support positions,” Stallings said, adding they hired around 15 new staff members. “Fortunately, they did bring me in a year early. The first part was really just kind of learning the district and building the culture of bringing these two buildings together because it’s a very unique situation and you’re just not moving teachers.”

Pearce said the new hires will contribute to the district’s growing workforce, which is around 850 employees.

District-wide enrollment will likely be a bit over 5,300 students this school year, Pearce said. Its enrollment was 5,109 students last fall and was slightly more than 4,900 students at the start of the 2020-21 school year, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting. That represents a roughly 8% growth in student population in the last six school years.

City officials in Republic are projecting its population – at 21,392 in 2024, according to U.S. Census Bureau data – will grow to 27,565 by 2030 and 37,386 by 2040.

Projections like that, 75% growth in residents over the next 15 years, will continue to put pressure on the district to grow its facilities. 

Pearce said the district has been planning for growth, and the new building is key to its facilities plan. As student enrollment grew, officials around five years ago targeted constructing a new facility. The intermediate school concept resonated to relieve crowding at the elementaries and middle school, as well as build a slower bridge from fourth grade to seventh grade, Pearce said.

“We knew another middle school was going to be hard because if you do that, then you’ve got another gym, another football stadium, another locker room and practice fields,” Pearce said. “That’s a big amount of territory to be able to do that.”

Construction for a new building was more realistic than adding onto existing structures, he said.

“All of our elementaries are landlocked and with car lines and major thoroughfares,” Pearce said. “Our middle school is the same way, with railroad tracks and not enough space.”

Macy Mitchell has witnessed the community’s growth for years as executive director of the Republic Area Chamber of Commerce. He said the Intermediate School is a great addition to the school district and allows for more personal care for the building’s students.

“Opening space at the current elementaries and also the middle school makes great sense to treat the current and future growth of families moving into the area,” he said via email.

Mitchell credits Pearce and the school district’s leadership team with being proactive, forecasting and staying ahead of Republic’s growth.

“They continually are innovative and creative through their current use of school buildings, additions to, and undergoing new construction when needed, with their students as a top priority,” he said. 

Place of purpose
Among features at the Intermediate School are a large media center, outdoor classrooms, a high-wind shelter and flex spaces throughout. The design utilizes natural lighting while emphasizing security, officials say. Additionally, a large multipurpose commons area provides opportunities for the district to host community events. One of its walls is decked out with a giant mural of the school district’s Tiger mascot.

“We have affectionately nicknamed this ‘Tiger Town,’” Stallings said of the building. “Really for us, we only have two years with our kids here. And so as much as we want them to have a sense of belonging here, we also just want them to form a connection to being a Republic Tiger and everything that we believe that our district offers from now until beyond high school.”

The design process was guided by input from students, staff and families, officials say.

“We really invested in the kids to share with us what they wanted,” Pearce said, which included features such as flexible learning spaces. “We also did some tours of buildings up in the Kansas City area, and so we saw some things that we thought were good and were physical structures of what our kids were asking for.”

Stallings said part of the new school’s purpose is a desire to get away from the “traditional square box classroom.” Fifth-graders will continue to have an elementary schedule and stay with a homeroom teacher for most of the day, while sixth-graders will follow a bell schedule and rotate to different rooms for core and elective classes, as well as an advisory period. He said the concept is unique by having two different learning systems going on under one roof.

“This building was intended to really bridge between elementary and the middle school,” he said. “With this space, we can kind of slow that transition down a little bit and be more gradual.”

Continued support
As the intermediate school project wraps up, officials say the school district remains poised to address growth needs thanks to voter support. In April, over 70% of voters gave the school district approval for a $22 million bond issue.

The funds are being used toward construction of a multiuse indoor facility, upgrades to portions of the middle school, addition of air conditioning for Price Elementary’s gymnasium, replacement of heating, ventilation and air conditioning in various buildings and improvement of window safety by adding security film to all exterior doors in each building and to school entrance vestibules.

Pearce said the estimated cost to complete all the projects is $33 million, which is $11 million more than the bond issue, according to past reporting. The $11 million is being funded from a combination of interest earned from existing bond issues, savings from the Intermediate School project and district funds set aside for capital projects, according to officials.

The multiuse indoor facility, which comprises roughly 57,000 square feet of additional classroom space and a 65,000-square-foot turfed area to be used by students during and outside of the school day, is scheduled for completion by August 2026. Bids for all the work called for by the bond issue came in under $33 million, Pearce said.

“Dirt is moving, and they’ll get ready to pour foundations and whatnot later in the month,” he said of the indoor facility project, which also has Federal Construction Inc. as general contractor and H Design Group as architect.

Pearce said band, choir, Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and the weight room will move to the activity center, freeing up large spaces in the high school that could be repurposed for around nine classrooms.

The no-tax-increase bond issue kept the school district’s tax levy at its current rate of just over $4.21 per $100 of assessed valuation.