Photo by Deb Gau RTR School Board members John Bloom and Peggy Dunblazier, and Superintendent David Marlette, were among the area residents discussing possible building sites for RTR’s new school during a special meeting Wednesday.

TYLER — The location wasn’t on the table when the Russell-Tyler-Ruthton School District voted in February to build a new preK-12 school. But, school district officials said Wednesday, a new building site option from the city of Tyler had benefits over building on existing RTR property in town. There would be room for growth, and perhaps most importantly, it would mean construction doesn’t disrupt classes.

The RTR School Board and community members, including members of a building task force, talked over those and other factors during a special school board meeting Wednesday night. School board members ended up voting unanimously to build the new school on property Tyler is acquiring on the west edge of town, north of U.S. Highway 14.

Tyler has been in negotiations since December or January to purchase about 104 acres of farmland on the west side of town, Tyler City Administrator Robert Wolfington said Thursday.

“The school wasn’t really the driving force,” Wolfington said. Tyler is interested in having land for additional development — currently, the city is pretty “land-locked,” he said. But the new school was an option Tyler considered for development.

The city is working on acquiring a total of around 104 acres of land through a contract for deed, Wolfington said. Initially, 30 acres would be available for construction of a new school. The school district would swap land that it owns, including the high school campus, athletic field and additional farmland to the east of the high school, for the land the city acquired.

At the special board meeting, RTR Superintendent David Marlette said the school could be built on the new site option, and still stay within the district’s original $35 million budget. He presented an updated school design, which had a building footprint of 154,198 square feet, and could work on three different potential building sites in Tyler. The new building footprint was slightly smaller, but school board member Peggy Dunblazier said the reduction would come from having a little less square footage in areas like the auditorium and the gymnasium, not classroom spaces.

Marlette went over preliminary budgets for building the preK-12 school on the existing school site in Tyler; on the high school football field; and on the new property. All three options would be done for $35 million, he said, but they would each come with different costs within that budget.

“We can make all three work, we just need to lay out what’s best for kids,” Marlette said.

Building on the football field or the new building site would save money in building demolition costs, but have added costs in groundwork, utilities and paving driveways. If RTR chose to build the new school on the existing high school site in Tyler, it wouldn’t have those additional costs, which would free up an extra $782,000 to be added to the $1.4 million construction contingency budget.

“It at least leaves a contingency,” Marlette said. However, building the new school on the high school site would disrupt classes, and likely mean changes to the school calendar to work around construction.

“The original site of the building is probably the best budget-wise, but worse for kids,” Marlette said.

Members of the RTR School Board said there were positives to the new site proposal.

“That blank canvas out there gives us an opportunity for the future,” board member Tony Dybdahl said.

Now that it was an option, the property north of Highway 14 seemed to make the most sense, Dunblazier said.

Members of the audience said the location north of Highway 14 would also give the school potential for outdoor learning spaces, for agriculture or environmental education.

Of the three options presented Wednesday, school board members voted unanimously to go with the new construction site on the west side of town.