When will Belleville 201’s CAVE addition be finished and new programs begin?

Construction is underway for the addition to Belleville School District 201’s Center for Academic and Vocational Excellence , or CAVE, but it will not be ready for the beginning of the upcoming school year as district officials had initially hoped.

“We knew from the very beginning that we had a very aggressive timeline,” Superintendent Brian Mentzer said.

Most of the utility infrastructure is now complete, concrete is being poured and the steel building is on site, he said.

The district realized in late spring that opening the annex on August 14, the first day of school, wasn’t likely due to long lead times on supplies and materials. Now, Mentzer said he’s expecting construction of the annex to be completed in the winter.

Previously, he said he hoped to have students in the annex by the beginning of the 2024-25 school year or by the middle of the year at the latest.

With the latter becoming a reality, the district has been identifying space in the original CAVE facility to accommodate its expanding programs and growing enrollment. It will have more than 150 additional students this year, according to Mentzer.

District 201 is building the 15,000-square-foot annex to the southeast of the main CAVE building to expand its offerings in aviation and healthcare and establish a new program for automation, manufacturing and robotics.

The district was previously looking to add a program for advanced business applications, but that has been put on hold based on the emerging interests of students and the community, Mentzer said. That doesn’t mean the district is abandoning it, however, and students interested in careers like accounting and entrepreneurship still have pathways through the district’s existing course offerings, including the CEO program .

The five-part, metal-clad CAVE annex will have a similar aesthetic to the main facility with its signature green and white colors. It will have no interior hallways, with entry and exit to the rooms through doors along the northwestern wall of the building.

Two-fifths of the building will be for the expanding aviation programming, one-fifth will be for the expanding healthcare programming and one-fifth will be for the new automation, manufacturing and robotics programming. The remaining one-fifth will be used as flex space and room for future expansion.

In March, District 201 awarded the construction bid for a total of $3.67 million to Millenium Construction, below the initial cost estimate of $4.25 million.

Assistant Superintendent Dustin Bilbruck said the district did some value engineering during the design process to drive down the project cost.

Last fall, the district sold $7 million in general obligation bonds for the working cash fund in its budget in anticipation of future projects, including the CAVE annex as well as track and turf upgrades at the district’s high school stadiums.

The purpose of the working cash fund is to allow school boards to have sufficient funds in their treasury to pay for expenditures, functioning like an internal bank.

At its June meeting, the board of education approved transferring about $5 million of the bond revenue from the working cash fund to the capital projects fund. Some of those dollars will now be used for the anticipated projects like the CAVE annex.

Expanding programs

District 201 is working on the automation, manufacturing and robotics programming with Southwestern Illinois College, which is opening its new, $20 million manufacturing training academy to students in the upcoming semester.

Mentzer said now that SWIC has finalized its programming at the academy, the district is going to work with SWIC this fall to finalize its own automation, manufacturing and robotics program, which will prepare students for the academy.

The two programs the district is having to find space for in the fall are expanded aviation and healthcare.

The district already has introductory healthcare courses at Belleville West and East, and it’s adding an advanced program with credentialing this year.

The advanced healthcare program will be offered in the main CAVE building in an area currently used for professional development and meetings until the annex is ready, at which point it will be moved there, Mentzer said.

In the spring 2023 semester, District 201 started an experimental program for aviation trades in cooperation with Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. to train students in skills like cabinet finishing, composites and upholstery for new aircraft.

Now, the district is expanding the aviation trades to include things like airframe and powerplant mechanics, avionics and metalworking, Mentzer said. That curriculum is still being developed and will likely be offered in the fall of 2025 in the annex.

For the upcoming school year, the district is adding a pathway for pre-pilot training and airport and aviation management. Like with the advanced healthcare program, the district is finding space in the main CAVE building for this programming during the fall semester before it moves into the annex when construction is complete.

All of the programming that will eventually be housed in the annex, like much of the programming in the main CAVE building, is dual credit with SWIC, Mentzer said.

Revised solar proposal

Last fall, the district began exploring using solar power for the CAVE campus, joining a number of metro-east school districts that have been doing so to save money on their electricity costs.

In November, the board approved a proposal from StraightUp Solar for phase one of the project, which is integrating solar onto the south roof of the main CAVE building.

Phase two will involve adding solar to the CAVE annex once it’s finished.

The cost of the original phase one proposal was $991,000, but through a variety of incentives — two of which are immediate and one that is paid back to the district annually over the repayment period — the net cost was going to be $275,000. The estimated cost savings over the 25-year lifespan of the solar array was anticipated to be $1.8 million, Mentzer previously said.

After the board approved the phase one proposal, however, StraightUp Solar came back to the district and said that, in order for it to be viable, Ameren would need to charge a utility grid upgrade fee, Bilbruck said at Monday’s board meeting.

Under the original proposal, the district was going to sell its solar energy generated at the CAVE back to Ameren’s grid, which was why the utility company needed the grid upgrade.

StraightUp Solar presented the district with a zero-export option, Bilbruck said, which means the district would have used the solar energy it generated. The financials with that option “didn’t quite make as much sense as they did when the project was originally approved,” he said.

A revised proposal the board approved Monday evening is a compromise between the two systems.

The system on the main CAVE building will have equipment and technology that will limit the amount of the district’s solar energy that will go back to the grid, so Ameren will not need to make the grid upgrade and charge the district a fee to do so.

“In terms of your savings, however, you know, this is our best option to take advantage of this environment for renewable energy,” Bilbruck said.

With the revised proposal, the cost came down to about $863,000 before incentives, and the net cost increased to $345,975. The district now expects to save $1.45 million over the 25-year lifespan of the solar array, according to Bilbruck.

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