New gym floor coming, bleachers discussed

Published by admin on Wed, 04/02/2025 - 7:00pm

Weiser schools personnel recently spent time with team members from EV Studios, the district’s contracted architectural firm. Pictured, from left, Superintendent Dave Kerby, maintenance supervisor Eric Pfeiffer, Amanda Bidwell, Andrew Coenen, Brian Welch, and WHS Principal Drew Dickerson.
By: 
Nancy Grindstaff
Weiser High School’s nearly 60-year-old gymnasium floor is due to be replaced this summer, with its funding coming from this year’s receipt of state school modernization funds.
 What can’t be paid from that bucket of funds is the replacement of the almost 35- year-old bleachers that WHS Principal Drew Dickerson thinks may not hold up for a move out and back into the gym.
 During the March 10, monthly Weiser School District school trustees meeting, Dickerson described the aging bleachers.
 “If (when) we take them out to put in the floor we won’t get them to go back in,” Dickerson said. “We have modified and welded them back together and we just won’t get those to go back in. There are 192 broken seats in those bleachers. I have counted every one of them.”
 Replacing the original 1967 bleachers in the very early 1990s, the current set has been modified to meet a variety of needs over the years, including the removal of an entire row of seats on the south side, as well has some ill-fitting handrails on each set of stairs.
 “The reason we made that path was so people could go up and walk around the bench, because with the announcers booth that’s down on the floor, there’s no room,” Dickerson said.
 He said the plan for new bleachers is to slide them back by the width of one row, leaving more room for the players bench, and moving the announcer’s booth into the stands.
 “There would be a better walkway behind the players,” he said. “I think there are 70 seats that were taken out and I found them. The problem is, to replace broken seats in the bleachers you have to take off the end one, and every single piece down to the broken one. I looked at that and it gives me a headache just looking at it.”
 Deputy Clerk Barbara Choate spoke to the bleacher financial question before getting into her monthly financial report.
 “The bleachers are something that we’re going to have to talk about,” Choate said. “They’re something that cannot be paid for with those modernization funds. It will need to come out of general fund or levy dollars, and we can certainly talk about that as we get closer to that project and see how much those bleachers are going to cost us.  
 “There are some plant facilities money,” she added. “We have the four-year $310,000, but this year we’ve spent all of that on the track. Next year we’ll get that other $310k from the levy, and the $400,000 from the supplemental levy that will pay the money back. We levied $800,000 for the track over a two-year period of time, but it cost us $1.2 million just this year, so we’ve spent all of those things from what I would call our savings account and so we need to wait for that to be replenished before we can do the other projects, like for just the bleachers.”
 Choate said the district is also looking at doing something with the planned sports complex building that will hold restrooms, a concessions space, and an additional area for indoor sports practices.
 “That building was donated to us, but we have to pay for the concrete, power, and water, and the construction of the building,” she said. “So we need to see where those levy dollars will even out for us after we pay for the bleachers and do some of those kinds of things.”
 

 

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Signal American

18 E. Idaho St.
Weiser, ID 83672
PH: (208) 549-1717
FAX: (208) 549-1718
 

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