Columbia Public Schools has introduced a publicly accessible dashboard that enables community members to review and assess the facilities needs of buildings throughout the district. This initiative coincides with the district’s progression into the final stages of developing a comprehensive 10-year facilities and infrastructure plan. Additionally, the Columbia School Board is considering presenting voters with a $260 million bond issue in the spring, intended to fund approximately half of the proposed plan.
The Columbia Public Schools Facilities Planning Dashboard is accessible through the facility planning section of the district’s official website. Users may navigate across multiple tabs that provide detailed summaries of each building’s condition, including outstanding maintenance requirements. The dashboard also offers filtering capabilities, allowing users to sort information by a building’s physical condition, the nature of maintenance needed, and the associated costs.
During a School Board meeting held on September 24, Ian Kilpatrick of the DLR Group , the firm responsible for conducting audits across all 43 district buildings , presented a comprehensive overview of the audit findings. Each building was evaluated on a scale of one through five and subsequently categorized as either best, average, or poor.
The district’s oldest buildings, namely Hickman High School, Jefferson Middle School, Benton STEM Elementary School, and Ridgeway Elementary School, received poor rankings, indicating that they require prompt attention in the near future. Each of these facilities is approximately a century old or more.
Among the remaining 20 elementary schools in the district, eight received best rankings while 12 were rated average. Eagle Bluffs Elementary School, which opened in the fall, achieved the highest ranking of all district buildings.
Accounting for Jefferson Middle School, four of the seven middle schools in the district are ranked best, while two are rated average. John Warner Middle School, the most recently opened middle school having launched in 2020, earned the highest ranking among the seven middle schools.
Among the five high school facilities, and including Hickman High School, two schools , Battle High School and the Columbia Area Career Center , received best rankings. Douglass and Rock Bridge high schools were both rated average.
The district’s Long-Range Facilities Planning Committee has conducted a series of open houses throughout the fall to gather public input on the development of the 10-year plan. The final open house is scheduled for November 17, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., at the Gentry Middle School cafeteria, located at 4200 Bethel Street.
