CAPE SCHOOLS PLAN SALE OF OFFICE BUILDING ON N. CLARK

The Cape Girardeau Board of Education will sell the building that currently houses the district's administrative offices and move into a building it currently owns within the next two years.

The school board will select a realtor by the end of the month to handle the advertisement and sale of the building located at 61 N. Clark. The building and approximately one acre of land were appraised earlier this year at about $430,000.

"I think it could be a building that would be useful for all types of businesses. Certainly insurance companies or buildings that need office space as well as some storage would find it a good location," said Board of Education President Dr. Ferrell Ervin.

No timeline is in place regarding when the building is sold. However, Ervin said district staff, including Superintendent Dr. Dan Steska and other top administrators, secretaries and the accounting department, will like move in two years.

The move would coincide with the opening of a new, four-year high school in fall 2002. The building is currently being designed by William B. Ittner Inc., an architectural firm in St. Louis. Construction is scheduled to start before summer 2001.

"Clearly, we can't make the move until the new high school is really in place and the various restructuring of activities at the elementary school level occurs," Ervin said. "This was all included in our master plan."

In 1996, the school board adopted a long-range master plan to guide it through improvements in programs, buildings and budgeting over a five-year period. Construction of a new high school and a new vocational school were included in the plans for building improvements.

Also planned was the closure of May Greene, Washington and Louis J. Schultz schools, creation of a fifth-sixth grade center and seventh-eighth grade junior high, and establishment of kindergarten-through-fourth-grade elementary schools.

Towards the end of the five-year plan, the current vocational school, located at 301 N. Clark, would be renovated to house administrative offices, districtwide programs such as Parents As Teachers, and centralized maintenance services.

Earlier this year, the school board said it would begin reconvening master plan committees to develop goals for the next five years. The board will hold a work session June 19 to determine what goals on the past plan have been met or are scheduled for completion.

"We've looked at various aspects of the master plan, but we haven't looked at the overall plan and exactly how many of the programs that we proposed to do that we have completed," Ervin said. "We'll hear a proposal from Dr. Steska so that we know what still needs to be worked on."