Pocatello School District Works Towards Reopening Middle School

The Pocatello School District is getting close to finishing a new building that will help open a new middle school and solve overcrowding in elementary school classrooms.

The New Horizon Center will give a new home to Pocatello’s alternative high school.

“There’s a lot of safety issues and supervision issues in mind. It’s a very functional design, so the kids are going to be excited because it looks great. It’s built just for their purposes,? District 25 Secondary Education Director Bob Devine said

And it should help solve a few other problems for the district as well.

“It served three purposes and very efficiently is allowing us to open a fourth middle school,? District 25 Spokeswoman Shelley Allen said.

One of those purposes is helping to deal with heavy overcrowding at local elementary schools.

By moving the alternative high school program out of the Alameda Center, the building can get reopened as a middle school.

And by doing that, all the sixth-graders in the district can be moved up to junior highs, easing the strain on local elementaries.

“We don’t have enough spaces at one elementary. So we’re busing kids to another elementary where we might a have a few more seats. It’s expensive. It’s hard on parents. It’s hard on the kids,? Devine said.

The new center might be the cheapest way to solve the problem.

By turning the old stock supply building into the New Horizon Center, the district doesn’t have to build a whole new elementary school or add on to an existing one.

“It would have been probably in excess of $9 million to add onto Edahow and more than that to build a new school. And we did this for less than $3 million. So we’ll save a lot of money. We’ve done this very efficiently,? Allen said.

District 25 says the New Horizon Center will be ready for the next school year this fall.