Sedalia School District should act now on wiring at junior high

In 1926, Henry Ford announced the eight-hour, five-day work week, Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel from France to England, and Hirohito became emperor of Japan. Also that year, Smith-Cotton High School opened.

Much has changed throughout the building, now the junior high, over the years — except, as we learned Monday night, the electrical wiring. During Monday’s Sedalia School District 200 Board of Education meeting, Assistant Superintendent Brad Pollitt said the former high school building needs all new wiring to replace the original equipment. Board member Jeff Redford added that the building is experiencing “a severe shortage of power,” a fact reiterated to us by junior high Principal Wade Norton.

“We are totally over-maxed out on power available within the main building,” Norton told us. “We have one computer lab, in the library; we cannot add a lab now, even if we had the computers and wiring, due to the (insufficient) electrical part.”

Pollitt told us, “It’s time to improve the wiring in that building,” adding that the project is a high priority for the district.

Superintendent Harriet Wolfe told the board Monday that a formal request to seek proposals will be brought to the board’s December meeting. Pollitt said if the board approves it, he will immediately get with an engineer and start the bidding process. Depending on the contractor who wins the job, work might be done two or three classrooms at a time, displacing some classes for brief periods, or it may wait until the summer break so all of it can be done at once.

Norton called the rewiring and power upgrade a “critical need.”

“We have adapted to give students a great education, but we need to take care of safety issues and that means a total rewiring,” he said.

Money to cover the work would come out of Fund 4, designated for construction projects, so it would have no impact on classroom education or salary expenses.

And contrary to some critics’ statements, the former high school never has been considered “obsolete” — the new high school was needed not because the original building is structurally unsound, but because it could not be adapted to the technology-driven educational needs of high school-level students. As Pollitt told us: “That building has served a great purpose and will serve us into the future.”

The best way to ensure the junior high’s long-term viability is for the school board to approve the formal request to launch the project. Board members’ statements Monday indicated many support the idea. Redford may have said it best: “If we have the funds, let’s get it done.”