IGNACIO – Ignacio School District canceled its school board elections Thursday night because of a lack of candidates, instead choosing to vote in new members Luke Kirk and Robert Schurman by voice vote.
The two, who are the only two who met application requirements, will replace outgoing members Robert Jefferson Sr. and board President Ed McCaw in November.
There was good news on another front. District Superintendent Rocco Fuschetto said no more human remains had been found in the course of constructing the elementary school. Since construction on the school started in March, the district uncovered what it estimated to be 26 bodies of uncertain origin, a number Fuschetto revised to 21 Thursday night.
No foul play is suspected; it’s thought that the school was built atop an unmarked cemetery.
Fuschetto said the district planned to rebury the bodies quickly and expected to meet with representatives of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe on Monday to figure out a schedule.
He said it had proved “very hard to determine the ethnicity” of the dead, and said it therefore was likely that the bodies would be buried in Ignacio West in a common grave marked by a monument and enclosed by a fence.
“We’re thinking that’s going to happen pretty fast,” he said.
While the district is preparing to do right by the dead, its sights are riveted on another vast construction project: a massive renovation of Ignacio High School.
The project is slated to cost $17,026,000. Right now, RTA, the construction and design firm in charge of the project, estimates its latest designs would cost $17,795,824 to bring to life.
RTA project architect Ken Gregg said the firm still was working on reducing the costs.
“But we think we’re in pretty good shape, given the condition of the drawings, and LED light fixtures (get) cheaper by the day,” he said.
“We still have some work to be done, but we’re getting there,” Fuschetto said.
At an unusually crowded board meeting Thursday night, architects with RTA, the company charged with overseeing the construction projects that the district has financed with a $50 million bond, dazzled board members and school faculty with a series of mock designs for the high school, prompting board members to interrupt the presentation to express their admiration.
If anything, non-board members seemed even more impressed by the designs, which Gregg said were nearing finalization.
Indeed, while Gregg spoke, Ignacio High School Principal Melanie Taylor, who sat in the audience, could be heard murmuring, “I like that!” every other paragraph.
Demolition and abatement of the high school tentatively is scheduled to begin in January 2014, and construction is scheduled to conclude in October 2015, with high school students decamping to the junior high in the interim.
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
