When Jason Sternberger arrived in Kingfisher in 2011, the school district housed 1,270 students.

In the eight years since, that number has ballooned to 1,579.

Essentially, KPS has added two large grade levels in that span, but hasn’t added the infrastructure to grow with that number.

“We’re busting at the seams,” said Sternberger, the superintendent of schools. “We have nowhere to put more students.”

Case in point, a building on the west side of Heritage School, the district’s third and fourth grade center, was built and has served as a maintenance and storage facility for a number of years.

However, with Kingfisher’s student population increasingly growing, part of it had to be turned into vocal classrooms for students.

Gilmour Elementary was opened in 1964, some 55 years ago. Wings were added in 1971 and 1989, meaning the newest part of the building is 30 years old.

Although Heritage went through a remodeling phase, parts of that building are older than Gilmour.

Those factors and more led Stern-berger and other school leaders to look for solutions.

Through a series of meetings with principals and teachers and then another series of gatherings with more teachers, parents and community members, the solution most agreed upon is the construction of a new building.

Other options were considered, including remodeling or adding to Gilmour or Heritage, but most who contributed input surmised that was “throwing good money at bad.”

With a new facility in mind, the board of education is expected to issue a resolution calling for a bond election at an upcoming meeting, most likely in June.

If so, the bond election will appear on the ballot for voters in September.

The board took some action toward that reality at last Monday’s regular meeting. There it hired LWPB Architecture, a firm with which KPS has worked with on numerous projects, including the current middle school; and Joe D. Hall General Contractors, which would serve as a construction manager for the project and has also worked with KPS on a number of previous projects.

What will be voted on? How much? How big? Where?

While some of the specifics have been narrowed down, Sternberger and the board of education are looking to the public for more input before asking voters to vote on it.

As it stands, a new facility would most likely be built west of the current high school, at its north end.

One proposal has the facility housing sixth, seventh and eighth grade students.

That would allow the current middle school, which currently has fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth graders, to reduce down to three grades, beginning with third.

That would put first and second graders in Heritage while pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students would remain at Gilmour.

In previous meetings, a number of concerns were raised about that configuration. The two biggest were increased traffic flow to the area and sixth graders being on the same campus as 12th graders.

Another proposal suggested would limit the new facility to just the seventh and eighth grades.

That would put fourth, fifth and sixth grades at the current KMS. Second and third graders would attend Heritage and the rest at Gilmour.

Such a scenario would eliminate sixth graders from being on the same campus as 12^th graders, would reduce traffic flow by one grade level and would decrease the necessary square footage of the new building.

That, in turn, would mean reduced costs to taxpayers.

Whether either scenario is the best is still up for discussion and consideration, Sternberger said.

“We want feedback from the community, as many people as possible,” Stern-berger said. “We want new ideas.”

Sternberger has been hosting open, weekly meetings in his office each Tuesday at 10 a.m.

Those will continue with the exception of this Tuesday.

It’s then that representatives from LWPB will be at the high school library for a charrette, defined as “any collaborative session in which a group of designers draft a solution to a design problem.”

Basically, it will be a brainstorming session to which the public is invited.

It will begin at 8:30 a.m. and run at least through noon.

“I know a lot of people may not be able to break free from work, but if you have time, we would love for you to stop in and help with the planning,” Sternberger said. “If you can only attend for a short time, that is more than fine to come in late or leave early.”

Planning, asking questions and gathering information are also the purpose of Sternberger’s weekly open meetings dubbed “Tuesdays at 10.”

“It’s a standing meeting and it’s open to one person or 20 in my office,” he said. “Whether it’s one person or 20, we want you here. If we don’t have room in my office, we’ll move somewhere where we do.”

Sternberger said the meetings are basically “question-and-answer sessions.”

“We want to let people know what got us here, why we’re discussing this and how we can be good stewards of the people’s money,” Sternberger said.

If Tuesdays don’t work, Sternberger said he’s flexible.

“Honestly, anyone can come up at anytime,” he said. Sternberger’s office is located at 602 W. Chisholm Drive, just northwest of Gilmour Elementary.

“We’ll set something up after hours if someone needs that.”