Red Shirt plans domed school

By Jomay Steen, Journal Staff Writer | Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Previous Page

Share

• del.icio.us
• Digg
• NewsVine
• Fark

Print

Email

RED SHIRT VILLAGE -- Ground was broken last week for a new $3.8 million public school at Red Shirt Village on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, 22 miles east of Hermosa.

Community members and school officials shoveled the first scoops of dirt Thursday for the 14-month construction project that also includes a community health service field office. The project is funded through Shannon County's Impact Aid construction money and the school district's general fund.

Margo Heinert, superintendent, said simply planning the school construction has been a two-year project.

"It was a huge undertaking for us," Heinert said.

Planners wanted not only new classroom and health-service space but a new look as well.

According to officials, two monolithic dome structures, about 45 feet high, will be connected by a 60-foot long multipurpose room, creating more than 30,000 square feet of space in the new school.

Project engineer Kai Knag of Professional Land Art Associates of Rapid City said the two domes are each 24 feet in diameter. One dome will house a library-media center, video-conference computer lab, offices, classrooms and a commons area. In the other dome will be health care facitilies, a gymnasium, locker rooms, kitchen, pantry and dining area with a vestibule at its entrance.

"It's the first one of its kind in South Dakota," Knag said.

He said that Professional Land Arts Associates typically is conservative and conventional when building new structures, but the Red Shirt community had wanted something unique.

"With the impact from past tornados and other bad weather, the school board wanted a building that was extremely safe," he said.

Knag said he and his organization researched and even took a field trip to Grand Meadows, Minn., about 40 minutes south of Rochester, Minn., to tour a school and interview the superintendent there.

"We got all fired up about the project," he said.

Similar to the DakotaDome at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, a balloon-shaped membrane will be connected to a stem wall and inflated by fans, he said.

It will be sprayed from the inside with polyurethane insulation in three to four layers, forming a rigid shell. Then, reinforcing steel rods will be placed in vertical and horizontal patterns and covered with applied urethane foam.

Several layers of shotcrete, a sprayed concrete mixture, will be applied with pressurized air to complete the process.

"Special care will be taken pertaining to reinforcement steel around the doors and other openings inside of the dome to ensure the shell won't crack," Knag said.

Construction is set to be completed by late 2005, he said.

"The clock is ticking," Knag said.

The community had to bring in new power lines to supply additional electricity for the school and its state-of-the-art technology, Heinert said.

Currently, the school consists of four doublewide trailers that include classrooms, an administrative office and the kitchen and dining area. A combination gymnasium- community building is used by the school as well, Heinert said.

The school superintendent said enrollment at the kindergarten through eighth-grade school will grow in coming years, and school officials want to be able to meet that need.

"There are more and more young people moving back to Red Shirt Table with young children," she said.

Red Shirt Table resident Susanna Swallow recalls that a small Bureau of Indian Affairs building once housed the school. It was replaced by the four used trailers, brought into the community 20 years ago.

Swallow, 63, a cook at the school, said the BIA building was torn down in 1988, a few years after the trailers were set up. Construction of the new school will be just south of the current buildings, she said.

"We're ready for a new building," Swallow said.

Swallow cooks more than 250 meals in a combination kitchen-dining room at the school. Working with the school's kitchen stove, freezers, triple sinks and steam table for 17 years, she said the work area is crowded and that more storage would be nice.

She is looking forward to the walk-in coolers, freezers and office that will replace the school's compact kitchen.

All of Swallow's children graduated from Red Shirt School, and now, eight grandchildren are making their way through the school system.

"They're looking forward to a new school," she said.

Contact Jomay Steen at 394-8418 or jomay.steen@rapidcityjournal.com