ROCK SPRINGS — What will be done with the current Rock Springs High School when the time comes for students to move to a new school?
Right now, that has yet to be determined.
Dan Selleroli, the district’s facilities director, said once a timeline is established with the current high school, the district will start hosting discussions with other community organizations and residents to find potential uses for the building. Selleroli said he doesn’t want to take the building down because it could be used for other needs within the community. However, Selleroli also said the district would need to find a group to sell the building to. Even if the building isn’t utilized, it would count against the total allowed square footage the district has with the Wyoming School Facilities Commission.
Selleroli said people have ideas for how it can be used, but discussions haven’t taken place.
While moving day is far in the future, one of the concerns with moving the high school is the economic impact on downtown businesses. The school’s location near Downtown Rock Springs makes it a natural anchor point that brings residents and visitors through downtown. Chad Banks, manager of the Rock Springs Main Street and Urban Renewal Agency said he isn’t sure what impacts moving the school would have on daily business but knows the impacts would be noticeable when it comes to no longer having high school events taking place. Banks said athletics brings out-of-town visitors downtown and the school relocation would reduce that visitation.
Carl Tygum, a co-owner at Broadway Burger Station, agrees with Banks and said the lack of school events would impact his business. His restaurant doesn’t receive a lot of lunch traffic from the high school, but the impacts would come from the lack of evening events bringing people through downtown. He said the closure and demolition of East Junior High School had an impact because events the junior high school hosted were transferred to Rock Springs Junior High and no longer brought people to the east end of Rock Springs. With the eventual relocation of RSHS, another school would move to the west side of town.
“Besides Eastside Elementary, there are no schools on this side,” Tygum said.
Banks said he personally doesn’t like the idea of clustering schools near one another on the western portion of Rock Springs but understands the reasoning with the availability of land from the Bureau of Land Management driving the decision behind it. The district’s plans for the new high school would utilize 67 acres of land the district received in 2008. The guidelines from the WSFC call for at least 20 acres to be reserved for a new high school, with an additional acre per every 100 students it would house. Sweetwater County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees President Carol Jelaco said Monday the upcoming industrial projects will bring more people to the area that the district isn’t ready for. Student estimates conducted by SCSD No. 1 suggest the high school may have as many as 2,000 students in the future.
The district still needs to receive approval from the school facilities commission to receive funding and build and the district is lobbying local legislators and parents to voice support for that approval.
