Sep. 1—UNION — The response was instant and heartening for Tom Sheehy, the Union School District's physical education teacher.

A group of elementary school students had just walked into their indoor PE class building, a structure about 250 feet north of the high school gym and one that was renovated over the summer.

"There were a lot of oohs and aahs," Sheehy said.

And for good reason. The room in the building for PE classes is now about double what it was when the 2021-22 school year ended three months ago. The space is now available because the school district's music room was moved out of the building and into the school district's old kindergarten structure. The renovation work also included the removal of practice rooms and storage areas for musical equipment.

Sheehy said the added space now available will make it much easier to teach PE indoors when bad weather hits. He noted, for example, that if he is teaching a soccer unit indoors, instructing students how to properly kick a ball will be far less difficult.

The renovated building will also serve as an indoor recess site for elementary school students when the weather is bad. Previously, elementary school students did not have a regular site for indoor recess, sometimes forcing students to the high school gym for indoor recess. Mendy Clark, the Union School District's deputy clerk, said this practice was not ideal because it meant high school PE classes in the gym had to be displaced and it took a toll on the gym floor. Clark said the reason the extra use of the high school gym hurt was that children sometimes wore regular street shoes for the recess sessions.

The renovated building is also filled with rolled wrestling mats along its southeast wall in preparation of the renovated building hosting Union High School's wrestling practices starting in November. UHS wrestling coach Joe Shaw is looking forward to the additional space he will have available for his boys and girls programs.

"I'm very excited," he said.

Shaw said few high schools Union's size have a practice facility for wrestling that are as spacious.

"We will have one of the greatest around for a school our size," said Shaw, who also teachers math and Spanish at Union High School.

The renovations of the old music building conducted this summer were paid for with money from the school district's general fund. No money from the $4 million bond voters approved in 2019 for capital construction and maintenance work in the school district were used for the project.

Dick Mason is a reporter with The Observer. Contact him at 541-624-6016 or dmason@lagrandeobserver.com.

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