NEW ULM — The New Ulm Public School Board approved spending a maximum of $631,000 on projects at the Washington Learning Center and CTE Center during their meeting Thursday.

The projects are expected to be finished by the end of summer 2024. The bigger of the two projects financially is a Make-up air unit to be installed in the CTE Center for better airflow.

The council designated ESSER funds not to exceed $475,000 to cover the cost. Superintendent Sean Koster said these are funds that need to be spent before the end of the summer anyway.

“Those ESSER funds end at the end of the summer,” he said. “They have to be spent by the end of September. It was approved through the state to utilize those federal escrowed funds for air quality. We wanted to make sure that we utilized everything we had.”

Koster said the big picture with spending the funds in this way is to ensure that students are safe when they are welding or doing wood shop activities.

“It’s a building that was coupled with three different buildings to begin with and a roof over the top of those roofs,” he said. “We’re really looking at creating an environment that’s healthy for the students that are there. We have 150 students that go to the building every day.”

The Washington Learning Center project will center around replacing a walk-in cooler/freezer. The total cost is projected to be $156,093, with $76,932 for general construction costs and $79,161 for the new equipment.

Koster said the equipment currently being used came with the building when it was built, and is starting to show its age.

“One of the things that you want to do is spend down your food service fund,” he said. “When you look at replacement cycles of kitchens and equipment, this was at that point where we were replacing things [often] for the freezer and cooling system. If we’re going to spend money on that, we might as well replace them when we have the funds in the food service.”

Koster said there will not be any new additions with this cost, only replacing the current equipment with new versions.

Board member Denny Waloch made the motion to approve the funding for the CTE Center. Fellow member Melissa Sunderman seconded. Board member Amanda Groebner made the motion to approve the WLC walk-in cooler/freezer funding, with Christie Dewanz seconding the motion.

Koster said as long as everything goes to plan, both projects should be completed before the school year begins.