How do you build a quality school environment?

Answer: The way the Blooming Prairie Independent School District is doing it. Some now, more later.

Just as soon as the school year ended, construction manager Kraus-Anderson Construction Company of Minneapolis ordered work to begin on the $13.98 million high school renovation and expansion.

With the students gone for the summer, workers began to tackle the first phase of the construction project.

Since April 2007, when the district’s voters approved the work, supporters have been waiting for action and that’s what they’re getting.

According to Barry Olson, superintendent and high school principal, the district offices had to move to make way for the workers inside the high school building.

Outside work has begun on the new running track and parking lot outside the school.

“We expect the first phase work to be all done by fall and the start of the new school year,” Olson said. “The actual completion date is Aug. 12 and right now, although it’s early, they are on schedule and on budget.”

Olson also said there is “excitement” about the project.

“I think everyone is excited: the students, faculty and staff and the community, too. We all want a quality facility to deliver a quality education for our students,” he said.

Presently, the district has more than 700 students. More encouraging, perhaps, is the fact that “numbers are up in the elementary school,” according to Olson.

“Actually, our numbers have become rather stable for the last four or five years,” he said of the district’s enrollment.

When students return to classes in the fall, they will see only the beginning of the major renovation and expansion work.

After the 2008-09 school year, workers will return to finish the near-$14 million project.

“I’m excited, too,” Olson said of the construction project. “I’m just nervous about school funding.”

So, too, are other rural Minnesota school superintendents.

One of them, Joseph Brown, Grand Meadow’s superintendent, said the increase in state aid funding approved by the 2008 Minnesota Legislature will “just about cover the increase we will be paying in gasoline prices for our bus service.”

Olson agreed. “Just about every rural school district in the state is suffering financially,” he said.

School renovation and expansion, a plus at Blooming Prairie.

School funding for education from the state, a minus.