In the 11 years that Thom Chisholm has been the Superintendent of the Plains Public Schools, he says the last 16-18 months have been harrowing.

“Not just the leadership, it’s everybody and we are exhausted. Right down to the kids. Even the kindergarten kids, which believe it or not, the only ‘normal’ that they know is what they just experienced. No reference point,” he said.

As far as the new addition is going: On time. On budget. And no surprises.

“We call it a multi-function facility as it houses a new gymnasium, but it houses much more than that. We looked at this project on what we need, not necessarily what we want, as this comes from years of missing certain things. The gymnasium will not be necessary be used for scheduled events but to alleviate the conflict of running all of the K-12 students through one facility.

"We also needed a new Fine Arts department which comes from a safety point of view and because the accessibility to it has been less than par. And one especially important element that we tend to neglect in Western Montana and that is the Performing Arts," Chisholm said. "We have a nice little history of performing arts here in Plains, so we incorporated all of those things and rolled it into a bundle,” Chisholm said.

The building is a design-build model, and the contractor is Western Interstate out of Missoula.

“We were about four weeks behind but one of the subcontractors came in, and that was the erection of the steel building itself, and they were scheduled for six weeks and they quite literally did it in 12 days. And that was Peak Construction”, he said.

Chisholm and his principals literally scratched this out on a piece of paper and then when some funding mechanisms became available, they were pretty much able to get what they needed and a couple of little things that they wanted.

“The new building will have art rooms with kilns for pottery,” Chisholm said in a previous Valley Press story. “The teacher now has to take the clay projects from the classroom and go outside to the kiln area in another space. The new space will allow all that to be done in one area. Cold weather is not very compatible to kiln-fired artwork.”

Funding for the project included federal grants and a $400,000 donation from a private citizen who attended Plains High School in the 1940s.