Students at Colfax-Mingo and Baxter schools had their last day of school on Wednesday, May 22.
For one building though, it will be the final day of classes most likely forever and certainly for the foreseeable future.
The Colfax-Mingo Middle School building closed its door for classroom instruction for good after nearly 100 years of operation.
The school building, which served 90 students during this school year, will continue to be used for athletic events. Classroom instruction for the seventh and eighth grade classes has been relocated to the Colfax-Mingo High School, and sixth grade will remain at the elementary school building where it was moved at the beginning of the 2012-13 school year.
According to Marty Lucas, Superintendent of the Colfax-Mingo school district, the district projects a savings of roughly $50,000 annually from the operations of the lands and the building alone. While the building will still be used for athletic events, overall maintenance needs will decrease as well as utilities.
There will be associated savings as well from transporting children and less personnel needs as the district transitions from three buildings to one. Beyond the savings off the current usage are the expenses the district would have to keep the building in use.
“The benefit to the district is that we won’t have to spend the money to bring the middle school facility up to code,” Lucas said. “There are significant code issues that would need to be addressed immediately if we were to stay, and we’ve got space here at the high school.”
The school was originally part of the Mingo Consolidated Schools when it was constructed in 1917. The first class of graduates consisted of seven students: four men and three women. Two of the men enlisted in the military after their graduation.
The school building was built onto in 1965 with the addition of the gymnasium.
Twenty years later, in the face of dwindling enrollment and rising costs, the district merged with Colfax to become Colfax-Mingo.
After the merger in 1985, the building became the middle school for the district where it served students from grades six through eight.
During this period, it usually served an average of 200 students annually, according to Becky Maher, the Colfax-Mingo Middle School Principal set to retire at the end of this school year.
That number dropped to 90 this year as the sixth grade moved to the elementary school and both seventh and eighth grade classes consisted of less students than normal.
The decision to move the sixth grade was brought on by the fact that the school building is not handicap accessible.
The district hopes the move will help to curb expenses to be able to match the dwindling budget.