MANKATO — The Mankato Area Public Schools board accepted bids for the Washington Elementary School and Bridges Community School secure entrance referendum projects on Monday.
Supt. Paul Peterson said both bids were slightly over what they projected but added that earlier bids for Dakota Meadows and the Center for Learning balance the numbers out.
“We’re chalking that up to, the mechanical bids are just a little higher than we had anticipated, so we’re really fortunate that those initial bids that we had talked about a few months ago … had all come in under budget,” he said.
The school board accepted around $1.5 million for Washington and $1.1 million for Bridges.
The Washington project was around $300,000 over while the Bridges project was around $15,000 over.
Peterson said if the warmer weather trend continues, construction could start earlier than anticipated.
“We were anticipating April … we have another pre-construction meeting scheduled in the next week, and we will be looking at our timelines to see, if this sort of winter continues, what sort of adjustment might we be able to make,” he said.
“It probably won’t be all that much earlier, but we want to make sure, especially with these shovel-ready projects, the ones that we anticipate starting this spring, and then finishing throughout the summer that we use everyday we can so there’s as little disruption to the opening of school as possible.”