If you’re looking for the district office or any of it’s employees, you won’t find them on the corner of Combs and Gantzel Roads any longer. They can now be found at their new state of the art facility at 43371 N. Kenworthy Rd. 

Designed and contracted by McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. along with DLR Group, the district office staff presented its new building to the public, Combs employees, and at a ribbon cutting and open house event on Wednesday, January 22.

With modern designing, wood trimming, write-on walls, and much more features, the new district office comes with everything the district employees need. Especially the board room.

“We haven’t had an official board room for what, 61 years?” Governing Board President, Shelly Hargis, said. “It’s nice to have this gorgeous executive boardroom where we can do our executive sessions.”

With the new office comes the ability for more teamwork among the employees that was needed in the old district office.

“I think the flexibility of the layout of the building, having the ability to collaborate with the team is a really great feature of the new building.” Kayla Fulmer, marketing and community relations director, said. “Having a solid, an open shared area, and then really having those conference rooms to be able to conduct professional development meetings. It just really helps emphasize the work that we’re doing here and gives us a great space to do that.”

There was nothing but supplies, personal items, files, and items that were required for operation, for the employees at the office to bring over from the old office but there was one thing that stayed there and would be remembered.

“I believe there’s a lot of history in the building,” Cindy Roup, assistant to the marketing to director said. “I think there’s a lot of history that I learned being in the older building.”

But there is one person who really liked the brand new office, especially because she just saw the blueprints.

“I think it is fantastic. It really exceeds the expectations that I had,” retired Superintendent Gayle Blanchard, said. “You have to remember when I left, I was part of that planning process, so, everything I saw was on paper and then a little bit out here on site, but it was mostly dirt and some cement walls.”

If you go into the boardroom at one of the governing board meetings, you’ll see a project that had taken a bit of time.

“We did our Combs project,” Superintendent Greg Wyman, said, “and what we’re trying to do with that is to make sure that anybody that comes into our facility understand that an organization, we are about people. We’re an education and education is about people. And by having those pictures, those 5,000 pictures, little pictures that make the big picture.”

The building cost about $6 million and it was all thanks to a bond that was approved back in 2016.

“I would certainly want to make it a point to thank our community and thank our votes for passing the bond to allow this to happen.” Fulmer said. “Certainly it wouldn’t have happened without their support. And I think that them recognizing the value of public education of the district, of recognizing that these funds are critical in helping us continue to serve our students and be state of the art and be cutting edge and be competitive is really important.”

What is to become of the old district office building? Wyman already has plans for it.

“We’re looking at a couple of different things.” Wyman says. “We’ll probably expand on CTA a little bit, and then we’re looking at expanding maybe the head start program a little bit, and then we’re looking at the possibility of trying to bring in an alternative school, an online school, and a place for alternative suspension.”

Gallery • 10 Photos