Changes ahead for Minot Public Schools | News, Sports, Jobs

An architects depiction of what Minot North High School will look like. Andrea Johnson/MDN

The start of school is just around the corner.

Jayla Thiel, a soon to be Jim Hill Middle School eighth grader, was standing in line with her dad, Joe Thiel, to register for the classes that will start on Aug. 24. She is looking forward to school.

Bruklyn Schrum, a soon-to-be sophomore at Minot High School-Central Campus, was at Jim Hill while her younger brother registered for classes during eighth grade orientation on Thursday. She said she is looking forward to cheerleading for Minot High this year.

There will be big changes coming for Schrum and her classmates in the coming years because the school district will be converting Minot High School-Magic City Campus into a 9-12 high school and remodeling and adding new construction at the new 9-12 Minot North High School in northwest Minot on the site of the former Cognizant building. The property was donated to the school district, which has saved on costs. The district also will be renovating Central Campus in downtown Minot into a third middle school. All of the projects will be funded with a bond issue that was approved by voters last year to address overcrowding.

Schrum said she thinks she will be attending her senior year at the newly renovated Magic City Campus but hasn’t thought much about it because two years is a long way away.

Bruklyn Schrum, a soon-to-be sophomore at Minot High School-Central Campus, is looking forward to cheerleading. She will be a senior and attend Magic City High School when the building is converted to a 9-12 high school and opens in the fall of 2024.

All of the buildings are scheduled to open to students in the fall of 2024, which means the projects are consuming much of the thoughts and work hours of Superintendent Mark Vollmer and other staff members in charge of making it happen smoothly.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do and it’s going to be a busy, busy couple of years, but exciting,” said Vollmer this week.

Vollmer said the family and consumer science classrooms and some career and technical education classrooms at Magic City Campus have undergone renovation this summer. Work will soon begin on an auxiliary gym that will be built at Magic City Campus. The work is needed to help convert it from a building attended by juniors and seniors to a four-year high school.

More work will soon begin on the Voya Building on the Minot North campus, which will be the site of the Minot Area Workforce Academy. One child-care classroom and one Head Start classroom will be included in the building to provide child care for parents who are undergoing training. The building also will provide classes for adults who are re-training.

Vollmer said most of the high school classes will be available at both Magic City Campus and Minot North when the work is completed, but two-hour block classes for courses such as auto technology, auto collision and welding will be held at Magic City Campus. Students from the Minot North campus will be bused to Magic City Campus for those classes. Classes in medical careers will be offered in both buildings.

Jayla Thiel, a soon-to-be eighth grader at Jim Hill Middle School, and her dad, Joe Thiel, were standing in line during eighth grade orientation on Thursday at the middle school. The building has been over capacity for the past couple of years, but a third in-town middle school will open in Minot in the fall of 2024.

Work on the North Minot campus will begin over the winter months and pre-fabricated walls will be ready for installation next spring.

Work on school buildings that are attended by students will mostly need to be done when classes are not in session. Science classrooms at Magic City Campus will be renovated next summer, and work to convert Central Campus into a third middle school will be largely done in the summer of 2024.

Vollmer said all of the work is being done to ensure the best possible future for the students in the Minot Public Schools.