C. J. Huff may not have been ready for us to know- Admin is moving to Memorial

In an e-mail sent today to Joplin R-8 staff, Superintendent C. J. Huff confirmed that administration offices will move to the former Memorial Middle School when the district is forced to vacate its bunker at 32nd and Duquesne.

Just a quick update...

The long range facilities planning committee is meeting for the fourth of five meetings this evening. One of the many areas that are being reviewed is where the administration building will move to after May 31, 2015 when our lease expires. A sub-committee has reviewed a number of possibilities including purchasing a different building somewhere else in the community, leasing an existing space in town, and utilizing an existing building within the district. The recommendation from the sub-committee will be to move into a portion of Memorial as it is centrally located and the district already owns the property. Other areas covered this evening will include how to best utilize the empty buildings we now have post-disaster reconstruction, future construction needs, and existing facility needs/improvements. More to come...stay tuned!

It appears that Huff was not planning to make the announcement today, but was forced into it by another e-mail that circulated through the district asking the following:

The drawings I have been seeing for Admin’s move to the old MEC building include a “Board Room” on the First Floor. IF the Board is going to meet at MEC, should your Cable One camera feed fiber be moved to MEC instead of JHS?

That e-mail was put on District Chat at 10:26 a.m. Monday. Eleven minutes later, a message was sent recalling the original message.

The next day, Huff revealed that the administration is moving to Memorial.

Though Huff has not clued in the Board of Education at this point, work reportedly has already begun on the remodeling of Memorial. Hopefully, it will not be anywhere near as much as the $450,000 used to remodel the MODOT Building so it would fit the Huff Administration's expectation.