Wednesday, Nov. 19 was an early release day for Hays High School students. Classes were let out at 1 p.m., allowing administrators, faculty and staff to participate in the Build-A-Bond activity.

Build-A-Bond was an opportunity for educators from all the district’s buildings to take inventory of their buildings’ needs and create a bond that solves these issues.

The event was hosted on a Zoom meeting lead by the DLR Group.

The meeting began at 1:30, and participants were divided into 30 breakout rooms. Each group was instructed to create a bond, listing needs for upgrades and repairs, identifying buildings they would close, adding new buildings they would create and making other changes to the functions of buildings.

“It just gave the staff an opportunity to look at the magnitude of how old the buildings are, not just in our building at the high school, but other buildings,” assistant principal Fred Winter said. “[Build-A-Bond] shows how much those improvements would cost, and everything that was on the table for building new buildings to address the issues they currently have.”

The central goal of Build-a-Bond was to get USD 489’s staff involved in the solution to their problems.

“Everybody’s being more and more involved,” Winter said. “We talked about needs and wants; there are some things that it would be nice to have, but it’s coming down more to functionality, a need.”

This exercise has hopefully helped to capture the attention of USD 489’s staff, students and others involved as to the district’s plans for the future. Perhaps the people involved with USD 489 from teachers, to students, to parents will opt to take action in ushering in the next chapter for the new generation of school-aged children.