Shawnee Mission North students started the 2022-23 school year with a brand new, state-of-the-art weight room.
Driving the news: The new $4.6 million facility, located near the school’s field house, was funded with $4.6 million from the district’s most recent bond measure.
- It’s funding all schools received to use specifically for facilities improvements as part of the district’s $264 million bond issue — which voters approved in January 2021.
- Principal David Ewers said part of the $4.6 million also went to two separate gender-neutral bathrooms and landscaping around the school.
Background: The previous building administration team sat down with stakeholders and determined a weight room would be the best use of the bond allocation, Ewers said.
- SM North’s old weight room, located underneath the English wing of the school, “felt like a dungeon,” Ewers said.
- Additionally, loud music and banging weights was not a conducive learning environment for the English classrooms above.
Key quote: “[Weights is] a class a lot of kids take,” Ewers said. “It is not just an athletics thing — it’s not even only for one team. We hope the [weight room] is used every day for big chunks of the day.”
ICYMI: The weight room, like the rest of SM North, features Bison signage, a nod to the school’s new mascot, which replaced the now-retired Indian mascot last year.
Here’s an inside look at the new SM North weight room:
