Compass Academy Charter School is looking to add to its footprint with a Sports Complex.
The project has been in the works for about a year. Last year, Superintendent Jason Inman said they created the Compass Academy Education Foundation, which is its fundraising, capital campaign nonprofit.
Once they raise the funds for the sports complex, the foundation will be used for other needs as the school grows.
Inman said they want to give the students facilities to participate in sports along with offering the sports themselves. They are looking at trying to raise between $30 and $40 million for everything they want.
“That’s including a football stadium with track, baseball and softball fields, a fieldhouse with competition volleyball and basketball gymnasiums, tennis courts,” Inman said.
Compass is in 3A for football. They are in a district with Crane, Alpine and Anthony this year.
For volleyball and basketball, Compass is in a district with Brownfield, Lamesa and Denver City.
They are starting baseball and softball this year.
“Our coaching staff has really grown this year, and we’re continuing to look to help flesh that out. There was a time we only had two coaches on football, and that’s really difficult to do. We’ve grown that staff, and that’s allowed us to be in a position to add those extra sports, the baseball and softball. Our cross country team just swept district — boys and girls, JV, everybody. The varsity teams are both advancing. Volleyball is in a real good position to make a deep run into the playoffs. Football will make the playoffs. We’re currently second in District. The golf team is really getting after it; tennis is playing. All our sports are really excelling right now. Our band has started competing in some of the marching contests in the area. They went to Portales (N.M.) a few weeks ago and made a really good showing over there. So we’re really excited about all our extracurricular programs,” Inman said.
They play some of their games at Astound Broadband Stadium and some at Ratliff Stadium.
“Their availability … can be a challenge sometimes, because their schedules take precedence over what we have going on,” Inman said.
Having a sports complex will, logistically, make life a lot easier for students.
“It will also help grow our programs, and it’ll be great for the kids. That’s one of the reasons the football stadium is such a big push. It’s not just about football. It’s about the track program. It’s about the golf program. It’s about the band program. All those kids that are in those different areas can all use that same facility for different things. That’s why it’s our number one priority. It’s not just because it’s about football, it’s about all the different programs that can use that facility,” Inman said.
Compass has 1,496 students in grades kindergarten through 12. Their waiting list has 850 students.
Inman said many of those students are involved in extracurricular activities.
“There’s very few kids that aren’t in some program,” he added. “The high school enrollment is 406 at this point from nine through 12 and I think almost every one of those kids is in one of those programs. Our high school band alone has over 70 members. That’s just marching band. That doesn’t count all the (under) classmen that are fifth grade up through 12th grade. All those kids can take band, and choir and orchestra, so pretty much everybody is involved.”
Compass has about $3 million earmarked for seed money from its last bond borrow for the complex.
“When we added the new the new portables to the east, we took out a bond and purchased some land and then paid for the portables, and we set a little bit of that money back to kind of start the funding for the sports facilities,” Inman said.
He added that they would prefer getting outside donations for the sports complex.
“We would rather not accrue any more debt at this point,” Inman said.
They are working on a master plan for the complex and once they have that, they can show donors and present what they want to build. The complex will be on 25 acres between Compass and Crossroads Fellowship church.
Inman said they have always had tremendous parent support.
Newton Engineering is doing the design phase. They hope to have the plans ready by December.
“It’s hard to ask for money when you don’t really have a map of what you want. We know where we want to put everything, but we want kind of a more formalized look at what the facility would look like before we take it out and say, Hey, we want you to build us a football field,” Inman said.
For academic buildings, they would like to build a brick-and-mortar high school. The four big, new portables that are east of the campus currently house seventh through 12th graders. The buildings have 40 classrooms.
“They’re pretty well-built buildings. They’re pretty solid, and I think they’ll be serviceable for quite a while,” Inman said.
There is a long line of portables to the south of the campus that came over with them from the Pagewood Avenue location. Compass is now at 5530 Billy Hext Road.
