Facilities plan recommends remodeling Quincy Middle School within eight years

QUINCY — Quincy School District patrons should be thinking about remodeling or replacing Quincy Middle School sometime in five to eight years, according to one of the recommendations in a new master facilities plan presented to the Quincy School Board on Aug. 25.

Superintendent John Boyd said district officials wrote a facilities improvement plan about 15 years ago, “that we were able to execute.”

The updated plan is designed to provide some guidance as the district continues to grow, Boyd said.

The previous plan included a new Quincy High School, remodeling Quincy Junior High into an elementary school and upgrading the district’s elementary schools.

The former junior high was remodeled into Ancient Lakes Elementary. The junior high students moved into the former Quincy High School, which is now Quincy Middle School.

The new facilities plan recommends remodeling and modernizing at the middle school within the next four to eight years, specifically the former high school shop areas. An alternate recommendation is to build an entirely new middle school on the same property, keeping the existing school in operation while the new one is under construction.

Other projects are recommended in the short term, the next one to three years, and one of them already has been completed.

The plan recommended finding a new location for Quincy Innovation Academy, currently housed in a repurposed building downtown. Board members have approved an agreement to buy the former Quincy Valley School property with the intention, Boyd said, of moving the Innovation Academy and distance learning programs to that site.

Quincy Valley School was a private school that was closed permanently at the end of the 2019-20 school year.

The report also recommended expanding the district’s maintenance shop and building a new district office.

The shop expansion would add storage space, freeing up a vehicle bay that’s currently used for storage. The estimated cost is about $100,000.

Boyd said district office operations currently are housed in five buildings. The facilities plan proposed a 15,847-square-foot building, at an estimated cost of $6.63 million.