Earlier this year, the East Greene School Board decided to tear down the three-story part of the Rippey school building and leave only the gymnasium for competitions.

Shared Superintendent Tim Christensen says that the reason why the Rippey gym is needed is because the two school districts only have one competition gym in Jefferson at the middle school.  He states it’s difficult to host competitions with freshman, junior varsity and varsity basketball games with a boy/girl double-header with only one gym.

In order to keep the Rippey gym, there are two challenges.  The first obstacle was replacing the heat source.  The location of the boiler was in the three-story part of the building and that had to be removed and replaced in the gym area.  Christensen comments that they are installing a new, efficient heating system.

He explains the other challenge to the project.

“The other part of the package that we’re putting together as well, there is asbestos in the building that we have an asbestos contractor doing some testing.  (We’re) required to test basically almost everything in the building to find out what has asbestos and what doesn’t.  And that asbestos will have to be removed prior to any demolition (that) could occur.”

Right now, Christensen says they have having sketches drawn up of how the demolition process will work and he’s hoping to get bids for the project in October.