Renovation to the auditorium started at the beginning of November.
The Hastings High School auditorium is undergoing renovations, including all new sound, lights, and additional audio-visual equipment.
According to Christian Yost, the Director of Vocal Music at HHS, the idea to update the technology in the auditorium started about two and a half years ago.
“It started with an idea, and then it has grown into something a lot more that has been beneficial for a lot more people than just the choir,” Yost said.
In order for the idea to be put into action, the project had to be approved by higher-ups in the district, Jeff Schneider, the Superintendent and Director of Finance, and Trent Kelly, the Director of Technology & Operations. The process to carry out the idea began with Yost reaching out to the district and the Hastings Public Schools Foundation, including Craig Kautz, the Executive Director of the Hastings Public Schools Foundation.
“I want to be humble about my involvement because Mr. Schneider and Mr. Kelly are huge in this and their ultimate decision to move forward with it, but I don’t think if Mr. Yost hadn’t come to the foundation and I hadn’t started talking about how this made so much sense that we’d be where we are, so I played a role in it, and that’s just facilitate communication between Mr. Christian and Mr. Schneider I suspect,” Kautz said.
Once the project had been approved, Yost collected bids for the renovations from a few different companies. After receiving the bids, Trent Kelly presented the project, as well as their recommendation for the bid, to the school board, who ultimately decides which bid to go with. The bid the school board selected was from R8 Productions, the company that will be doing the renovations.
“And then thank you to R8 Productions,” Yost said.
Funding for the project is being provided by the district and the Hastings Public Schools Foundation. After Mr. Schneider and Mr. Kelly heard the idea for the renovations, they decided to meet to discuss the possibility of using the Building Insight Budget, an annual district budget reserved for updating and improving school facilities.
“…As we looked at it, we always look at ways to improve our facilities every year, and we’d been talking and talking and so I think some of the staff members who use the auditorium frequently in our fine arts were pushing for this and that kind of started the conversation, and I think at the end of the day, we all agreed we’re renting all this equipment every year, probably better off to put the money upfront and buy [the equipment] and have it and in the long run,” Schneider said. “We’ll have a much better facility, and in the long run probably about the same amount of money spent, so it seemed to make sense.”
The auditorium hosts many different events each year, such as the school’s spring musical.
“And to see how many community members come, it isn’t just parents or just high school students that are there,” Schneider said. “There’s a lot of community members that look forward to our concerts and our musicals.”
After the Foundation Board approved helping with the project, the foundation launched its campaign entitled Lights, Sound, Action: An HPSF Production focused on raising money for the project.
“We fundraise for things that Hastings public tells us they want us to fundraise for, so I worked with Superintendent Jeff Schneider, and Mr. Schneider and Mr. Kelly, Director of Operations, thought this would be a good project for us,” Kautz said. “It was something that they really wanted help with so that they can stretch dollars as far as they possibly could just from a big perspective.”
The Hastings community has had a significant impact on the project with around half of the total renovations being funded by a combination of public and private donors through the HPSF.
“The community of Hastings is very, very generous, and really in my 30 plus years here, I would tell you when you talk about kids Hastings really has kind of a soft heart,” Kautz said. “Now they won’t just buy anything, you know they’re not wild with their money, but if you can talk about a good cause, and you talk about kids, I have seen this community year after year, day after day, come up with funds somehow.”
The renovations to the auditorium are happening in three phases. The first phase is almost finished and the second and third phases are predicted to wrap up over the summer so that renovations are completed before next school year. The first phase included: replacing the old auditorium incandescent fixtures with more heat-efficient color-changing LED fixtures, the addition of new stage lights, and the addition of wireless microphones. Phase two will consist of a permanent projector and screen as well as a mounted camera to record concerts and events in the auditorium. The final phase consists of adding lighting over the seats in the auditorium. So far, the HPSF has raised more than half of the original cost of the project, however, parts of the current three phases have been added to the project since the original plan for the renovations.
“I mean, they actually expanded that to the project, so under the original guidelines, we’ve not only met half, we’re exceeding that half at this point, but that we will get to half given how the project has evolved, but that’s good too,” Kautz said. “I mean, no use going in and just doing the stage lighting and the sound and not improving the general lighting, and then they’re gonna get creative and I can’t wait to see some of this.”
Helping to make the auditorium renovations possible is important to Schnieder because it’s a way to expand the possible for students who use the auditorium.
“All of our activities are important to our processes. Again, I don’t care if it’s music, if it’s sports, if it’s debate, all of our extracurriculars have a huge role. We have a mission statement for our district, and there’s a tagline at the bottom that says assuring the central, expanding the possible. Things like this are expanding the possible. We owe that to our kids, because… they need experiences like this, to learn those lessons so that they’re prepared to take on bigger issues as they move into their adult lives. I’m a huge believer in that,” Schneider said.
The renovations to the auditorium will make HHS one of the leaders of technology in their fine arts department in the central Nebraska area.
“I think that it’s exciting because here at Hastings High School, especially in the fine arts, we don’t get a lot of new things and so to be backed by the community and the district to have such a large project be done for us is a pretty exciting thing,” Yost said.
