BY KYLE TROUTMAN ktroutman@cassville-democrat.com

By the end of 2025, Cassville ag students will have a new facility geared toward hands-on learning.

In April, the Cassville School Board approved the construction of a 100×40-foot metal building with an 80×20-foot lean-to at the Wild C Research Farm, a 62.5-acre property on 13th Street owned by the district.

Merlyn Johnson, Cassville superintendent, said the idea for the structure came from ag instructor Jordan Ellis.

“It started with Jordan’s passion for bringing real-life farming opportunities to Cassville,” Johnson said. “The Wild C Research Farm is a nice property we are not using outside of things like farming cattle, learning irrigation and building fences. The building conversation started about three years ago, but we needed to get the Performing Arts Center done first.”

Johnson said Ellis presented renderings students helped create, which were presented to the board, and the building was added to the district’s long-range capital projects list.

Bids were requested and reviewed, and RE Smith won the construction management contract with a base bid of $331,000, plus $69,000 for the lean-to and an additional $10,000 for the soffit on the lean-to. The total project cost is $409,9000.

“The groundwork will start when school gets out, or even sooner,” Johnson said. “We’ll spend $115,000 before July, and the rest will be spent from then to November, with the project anticipated to be completed at that time.

“RE Smith is using some local contractors, and they are not making much money on the project, as they wanted to keep our business for larger projects.”

Johnson said the structure is a basic metal farm building, which will offer a classroom space and restrooms, allowing students to go directly from seated instruction to hands-on instruction. The classroom is roughly the same size as the current ag classroom at the high school.

“A lot of districts in the area are watching this because it will give kids the opportunity to do things they have not been able to do in a traditional classroom setting,” Johnson said. “This also ties into our Portrait of a Graduate work, as we will be teaching skills like work ethics and problem solving.”

Ellis said his inspiration behind the building proposal boiled down to basic opportunities.

“The inspiration for the wild C research farm was just the simple ability to give students more hands-on learning,” he said. “The addition of the new building will allow a new learning environment for students to house live animals, to implement their research projects on-site, to get hands-on training in large and small animal science, to study farm management and to learn budgeting of a farm.”