(Audubon) Construction will start May 1st on an Audubon Middle and High School Interior Renovation.

A special session of the Audubon Community School District Board of Directors was held on Monday to review bids. “Contracts will be going out yet this week and we are a go to get this project done.” Superintendent Eric Trager says the raw construction costs came in just under $10 million. While they will still be over the original budget he says it is affordable and won’t leave the district strapped for cash. “Very happy with where we are at right now in terms of the dollar amount and the project that we have designed and we are excited to get going.”

This was not the first attempt in the bidding process. In January 2019 the school board rejected bids which had come in 52% higher than they had budgeted for. The project will be done in three phases, beginning May 1st with demolition of science and math classrooms. “The second phase will run the first semester of the 2022-23 school year so we’ll have some temporary classrooms and some teachers displaced for that period of time and then the final phase will start in March of 2023 and complete at the end of the summer. So we’ll be all done and doing the happy dance by September 1st, 2023.”

A $7.5 Million bond issue was passed in the spring of 2020. 69.59% of the voters were in support of the measure.