School board president Dan Willis bounced up and down with the excitement of a child as he showed off the gymnasium at Iola Elementary School.
“This is probably the biggest elementary gymnasium in Kansas,” he boasted.
The building is still under construction, but much of the work on the gym has been completed.
The room features a regulation size basketball court that can be used to host tournaments. A curtain can divide it in half, creating two basketball courts.
Seating on the north and south side of the main court will each have room for about 225 people for a total of 450.
Decades ago, previous school construction projects at the middle and high school planned for larger gymnasiums, but those projects were trimmed to save costs.
The opposite happened with the planning of the new elementary school.
The board was all set to approve plans with a smaller gym, but made a last minute change to expand it.
“I give board member Jen Taylor credit on this,” Willis said. “She’s the one who said ‘That gym’s not big enough.’ So we made it bigger. It added about $1.4 million to the budget, but it’s worth it.”
He grinned, turning in a circle and motioning to various features of the room.
“Just look at it.”
WILLIS estimates he’s visited the construction site “at least 100 times.” He stops by at least once a week to check on progress, and has done so since construction began about a year ago.
He’s watched each step as the building slowly takes shape.
“It gets better as we go,” he explained as he took the Register on a tour of the construction site last week.
“Once we get a football field away, you’ll really start to see how far along it is.”
Yes, he clarified, the entire length of the school is about equal to a football field.
The tour almost always takes an hour, he warned. It did.
