By Cam Lee

Staff complete move into new Horizon School Division office

Jan 7, 2019 | 4:00 PM

Some new digs for the Horizon School Division are now in use.

The division has completed its move into a new central office building at 10366 8th Ave. in Humboldt, along the south side of Highway 5 in the eastern part of the city.

Staff members were able to move in over the winter break.

The Horizon School Division board approved the construction of the new facility in 2015, and ground was broken on the project Oct. 2017.

Director of Education, Kevin Garinger, told northeastNOW that the decision to build was about efficiency, as half of the staff were in rented space in the Olymel building, and the other half were located in the office quonset across town.

Break-in suspect sought

Suspect sought after Nipawin break-in

8h ago

Manslaughter sentence

Man sentenced after pleading guilty to manslaughter in death of brother in Sandy Lake

10h ago

BREAK INS

Several businesses hit by overnight break and enters in Naicam

13h ago

“I heard a comment this morning from one of my staff just saying that she dealt with a matter that would have taken her nearly half a day by the time she emailed, set up an opportunity to meet face-to-face with another person in a different building that was part of our organization,” said Garinger. “It would’ve taken half a day to get that work done, it was accomplished in a matter of mere minutes.”

Garinger said having two separate buildings made life a lot more challenging.

“Half of our staff have been in different locations, and so therefore in order to come together you…had to cross the highway…it was just so inefficient that way,” said Garinger. “Now, literally you either walk up stairs, or you walk down stairs, or you walk down a hallway and you can meet and get together and do the work that needs to be done in a much more effective, certainly efficient manner.”

Garinger said the project was completed within the $6.2 million budget, but actually came in under budget by about $100,000.

The new facility also allows the division to be more inclusive, said Garinger.

“Now that we have a bigger boardroom, and it actually even has a big flex room beyond that, that is a place where we can have large galleries and that sort of thing,” Garinger explained. “We’ll be able to have our students in and be able to be part of local government opportunities and meetings of the board that way, which I think is tremendous.”

The quonset building that had previously housed half the Horizon head office staff is going to be removed in March.

That portion of the site will be paved and used as a parking lot.

Horizon’s lease of space in the Olymel building expires at the end of this month.

cam.lee@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @camlee1974