Along with all the new changes at Powell High School, the agriculture department has not gone unaffected. With the help of Superintendent Mr. Jay Curtis, a new agriculture building has been approved for construction on Powell High School land.

The PHS ag program officially confirmed the plan to build a new building for the future agriculture students. This building, which will be located behind the practice soccer field, will be used to further the agriculture education in students  throughout the high school.

“The primary purpose will be for using it as an outdoor classroom for the agriculture department,  raising animals for kids who don’t have locations to raise animals, maybe within the town, but still have a desire to learn more about animals and agriculture,” PHS agriculture teacher Mr. Bryce Meyer said. “There will be a greenhouse out there as well, and handling facilities for livestock. The whole idea originally was to primarily focus on that, but also have it open to the science department and the math department.

“Another area we had a lot of interest in was the special education department has been very interested in looking at ways to get the kids more hands on opportunities to go … and maybe work with animals, or work in the green house and learn some skills there that they can take and maybe find a job with that kind of thing.”

Along with the agriculture department using the new building, they are offering the usage of the building to the other departments within the school as well. Because of the new building, students who may not have the space to raise animals at home will have the opportunity to raise animals at the school, possibly increasing the number of students in the agriculture classes.

“I think the new building will open a lot of doors for hands on education,” senior McKennah Buck said. “Right now we can learn about things in ag, but we can’t actually practice [or] execute them. This will give kids the opportunity to actually try things out.”

The approval of the new building means current students of PHS will miss out on the opportunity to take advantage of the use of the new agriculture building. But along with the education of agriculture in the school, it may further future careers in agriculture as well.

“If I had gone through the ag program with the building, I believe it would have helped me determine a future career field quicker,” Buck said. “By being able to experience all of the parts of the industry firsthand, I would have had a better idea of what parts I could see myself doing as a career.”

The process of completing the approval procedure has taken a few years to complete along with the actual constructing of the building itself that will be taking place over the next couple of years.

“We’ve been working on it for about three years, but once Mr. Curtis came in and started working with us on it, it’s taken the past year to get the approval process done,” Mr. Meyer said. “There are a lot of phases that we have to go through right now.

“The land is being transferred to the school, and then we’re going through the engineering of basically determining where the project is going to be built. Once we get that done, it goes into architecture. When it’s done, we have to put it out for bid, and once the bids are done, this spring, we’re planning on accepting a bid, and starting the building.”

This new building will provide PHS with a more advanced way of studying agriculture with more hands on assignments with many students being able to participate. PHS has a large agriculture program, and with this building, the program could increase in numbers further.