School Board Considers a Three-Story Competition Gym

By John Earp

At the April meeting of the Jal School Board, the prospect of building a new competition gym as well as a new career technical education (CTE) building was discussed. This was a preliminary discussion with no action taken, but the need for the district to consider expanding its facilities to accommodate more career training on campus in the future was emphasized. If the board moves forward with the new CTE building, a new competition gym would need to be built before the present Panther Gym were demolished to make way for the new CTE building. Superintendent Brian Snider said the campus is landlocked, with nowhere else to expand.

Architectural renderings were presented for the board and others present at the meeting to view. Both new buildings, if they are eventually constructed, would be three stories high, virtually sky scrapers for the little town of Jal. The proposed new gym would be built over the south side of the parking lot in front of the high school Property St. The bottom level would remain as a parking structure for cars and lower profile trucks, with the gym floor being on the second floor extending upwards. The proposed CTE building would house all the vocational training classrooms. Superintendent Brian Snider said that if the board chooses to pursue these projects, completion of the construction would take two to three years. On a related note, the Indoor Athletic Facility was discussed in the board meeting, with the board being informed that the facility had suffered an unfortunate flaw in its design, requiring the project to be paused until the huge steel frame structure is redesigned to be stable in the high winds typical of New Mexico. This delay is expected to push back the completion of the Indoor Athletic Facility at least six months beyond the originally planned completion next year.