Eastern Hancock Superintendent George Philhower
EASTERN HANCOCK — Eastern Hancock may be the smallest school district in the county, but administrators there have massive plans to benefit students and staff — plans they hope to implement over the next several years.
The district’s school board recently heard a presentation during their year-end, December meeting from the krM Architecture firm, a group which specializes in designing educational facilities. The firm shared an overview of the newest facilities study for Eastern Hancock schools.
After speaking with administrative staff and understanding the district’s needs and wants, the firm made several recommendations they hope district officials will move forward with over the next 5 years as part of the Eastern Hancock overall improvement plan.
Superintendent George Philhower doesn’t want to get too far ahead of possible projects coming to the district until different plans for different areas are finalized. However, he is optimistic about growth in the area and finding ways for the district to continue to flourish and attract students.
“We’ve got a list of projects we plan to start looking into for sure,” Philhower said. “Some of the changes are associated with a STEM grant we received to help pay for the changes and that includes plans to renovate our high school library.”
The preliminary library plans call for creating an area known in education as a “makers space” within the library. A “makers space” will have equipment, such as laser printers, to allow students an opportunity to be creative and make things associated with assignments.
“The library renovation is going to be really nice,” Philhower said.
The overall district preliminary growth plan is large, some 150 pages, Philhower said, of the new proposed changes district officials are considering over the next five years.
“We’ve done a really good job in working with the infrastructure to make all our buildings work, but now we’re onto wanting to do some things to make the function of the buildings match our vision for the district,” Philhower said.
In addition to the renovations at the high school library, other plans on the horizon include reworking some of the office spaces and renovating some of the restrooms.
“In the next few years we then plan to make some changes in our elementary library to create more class rooms,” Philhower said. “That is a project that will probably be a few years out, but we want to get it done.”
District officials noted the massive, 150-page plan has also earmarked the areas where district officials can actually add on to their current building should they need to expand the overall Eastern Hancock structure. Eastern Hancock is a unique school district in that their high school, middle and elementary schools, while in separate places, are all connected to create one massive structure.
“We don’t know that we want to expand in the immediate future because we are 35% transfer students and that’s a pretty volatile population that we’re just not sure if we want to build onto our buildings for just yet, but it’s good to know we have some place we can expand should we need to,” Philhower said.
While Philhower didn’t want to share costs of potential renovations or upcoming changes until plans are official and approved by the school board, he noted everything they decide to do will be geared towards making the school day better for students and staff.
“The architecture firm gave a us a lot to think about,” Philhower said. “There are lots of things on the table for us right now and we need to decide which ways we want to go.”
