We are continuing to make progress on our Strategic Plan goal of continually improving our facilities to ensure an excellent learning environment.
The bids for our summer construction work came in very favorably, I am grateful to say. At our April 24, 2026, Board Meeting, our board awarded the bid for a new floor in the Jerry Schaffer Gymnasium to Star Flooring. Star Flooring will replace our original floor that has become too thin with the last 60 years of use. This is a substantial project that has already begun and is planned to be completed by the end of the summer. Deciding what to paint on the gym floor has been a healthy challenge for us, as we are in year three of a four-year sports merger with New Buffalo. When the merger was formed in 2023, our Boards agreed that the sports merger would not change the colors or mascots of the River Valley Mustangs or New Buffalo Bison. The merger does not change our identity, but adds another identity for our high school athletes, the Red Arrow Raiders. We merged our high school sports to open up better athletic opportunities for students in both schools. The merger is going better than many people expected as we are better together being such small high schools. We are now able to field more robust varsity teams as well as JV teams giving our kids much more stable and higher quality athletic experiences. At the time of this writing, we are discussing if and how we should recognize the Raiders on our new gym floor while also honoring our proud history as the River Valley Mustangs.
The Board also approved the bids to do the following:
Replace our existing parking lot
Replace the planter with curbing and a decorative fence with "River Valley" on it
Replace our older sidewalks on the northside of our school
Replace the older sections of sidewalk on the east side (front) of our school
Widen the south driveway to provide more room for parent pickup/drop-off near the elementary school
All these projects are well in line with one of our key themes, which is to "take good care of what we have".
We will be using the south/construction parking lot as our primary parking area this summer during construction, as it will take nearly all summer to finish the work on our parking lot and sidewalks. The plan is to return it to grass and close the driveway after the construction is completed.
Wightman, our architects, are scheduled to present a Facility Condition Assessment to our Board of Education on Monday, June 8. This assessment will help inform and guide our next steps of Facility Improvements. We know that the Facility Condition Assessment will shine a light on many facility issues we have to resolve so we are approaching these facility improvements frugally as we need to stretch our dollars as far as they can go.