By Matt Mackinder
Clarkston News Editor

Last November, the Clarkston community went to the polls and approved a school bond proposal that would provide up to $197,500,000 for district-wide improvements, with no tax rate increase to taxpayers over the current-year debt millage rate.
This bond proposal was developed as a part of a long-term master plan for district facilities. Buildings and sites were assessed to determine and prioritize a list of facility needs throughout the district. This bond proposal focuses on the highest priority projects, and concentrated on three key areas: safety and security, aging building systems, and a new junior high, which will replace the 63-year-old aging building on the existing site. The new facility will provide larger classrooms to support innovative and collaborative learning, improve ADA accessibility, and improve traffic flow while preserving and updating the current auditorium and construction trades areas.
“With the passing of this bond, the community has shown they are vested in the future of Clarkston and the continued growth of our community,” said Clarkston Community Schools Superintendent Dr. Shawn Ryan in November. “With new and updated facilities, Clarkston can continue to offer high-quality education in schools that are healthy and safe, which will benefit current and future generations of Clarkston students and families.”
“We are truly grateful,” added Clarkston Community Schools Board of Education President Kelli Horst. “The approval of this bond allows us to continue executing our long-term facilities plan. This plan addresses the critical needs of district facilities and will help us better meet the needs of all students and staff.”
At the April 10 Clarkston Board of Education meeting, an update was presented by Mitch Duyser, GMB architect, and Wes Goodman, Clarkston Community Schools executive director of operations.
“Yes, it is going to be the first of many (updates),” Goodman said. “With the successful passing on Nov. 8, we started meeting the following Monday and we’ve met pretty much every Monday except holidays and snow days from that point so here we are in April and we finally have some things that you can see. Mitch Duyser, he’s been with us through our last bond and he is the lead architect on this project. Mitch has been awesome to work with. There’s been a lot of feedback, still a lot of work to go, but I think you’ll be excited to see what we have (so far).
Goodman also said the team is working in parallel with the new junior high with getting started on air conditioning projects for the elementaries and middle school.
“Those are on target to go out to bid yet this summer and work to start in 2024,” said Goodman.
Duyser noted that “the work going into this project started even long before the bond vote, so there was a lot of prep work that went into that and really part of that was developing what we call the ‘architectural program,’ which is the list of all the spaces, how big they are, what they’re next to, so that when we went to vote, we really understood what the junior high project wanted and needed to be.”
“A lot of the past few months have been spent validating that and also taking the design team that’s been put together on tours of facilities in Michigan that have been built new to help people see and visualize what their space could be like,” Duyser said. “And again, kind of validating what what goes into this building, so it’s really about only in the last maybe a month or two that we’ve started to put pen to paper on how this all lays out and how it could all work.”
Duyser then explained that the plans are early ideas and are by no means final.
“We’re really just excited to share where the team is headed to this and some of the vision we’ve got so far,” said Duyser.
Pertaining to the new junior high, Duyser said plans call for keeping the existing auditorium that’s part of the building now and keeping the area up to the north, what’s currently the Construction Trades area and also the district facilities office.
“There’s two portions of the building that we need to keep and we also need to keep the rest of the building in business as we build this over a series of phases,” Duyser said. “So how the building lays out and how it is shaped is really in response to how we keep the school functioning during the construction process and how we tie into all those elements that we need to keep going.”
The next CCS Board of Education meeting is scheduled for May 8 at 7 p.m. in the Community Room inside the Administration Building, 6389 Clarkston Road.

PHOTO: Clarkston Junior High. File photo: Matt Mackinder