(Photo above: Crook County Middle School | Photo Courtesy of BLRB Architects)
The Crook County School District is wrapping up their final facility-improvement projects from their $33.5 million school bond that voters of Crook County approved in 2013. Projects included the new Barnes Butte Elementary School, as well as various renovations, additions and improvements to every facility and site within their District.
To recap the bond’s successes, the citizens of Prineville received their first new elementary school in over five decades, which was designed with the primary goal of ensuring that taxpayers’ investment in education was wisely spent for both the construction of the school and its efficiency-minded operations.
This can also be said for every other project completed over the next three and a half years—stretching the budget dollar and making the best decisions for the students and staff who reside at each of these facilities.
BLRB Architects, a Central Oregon firm that focuses on K-12 design, was awarded every project under the 2013 bond and had an imperative role to their achievements. But not without the support of the Prineville community, which included board members, District staff, dedicated design committees and local businesses
and neighbors.
In fact, the new Barnes Butte Elementary School received a national award of Outstanding Design: Elementary School from the American School & University and featured in the 2016 Architectural Portfolio. Getting that type of recognition for a rural county in Central Oregon could not have happened without this community-minded collaboration, led by Project Manager Jerry Milstead, who was hired by the District to oversee every phase from project planning to construction completion.
On April 10 the District had the last of their celebratory open houses for the newly converted and remodeled Pioneer South building, which formerly housed kindergarten through third grade as part of the old Crooked River Elementary. The facility, with its art deco architecture, now houses the pioneer alternative high school, technology department, district production kitchen and therapeutic learning center.
