School, recreation improvements

South Heart Public School Superintendent Riley Mattson, who also serves on the town’s park board, said a new baseball and softball field, and accompanying shelter project for Adamski Park should be finished this summer. It will add to recreational opportunities for community members, especially children.

“We’re putting up a new picnic shelter, which will also include handicap bathrooms, showers and a kitchen area,” Mattson said. “Our plan is to have that all ready for this summer season, possibly toward the end of May. We want it to be a community complex. We’ve had our burgers in the barn with the Lions Club on Monday nights and we want to make that a ‘burgers in the park’ event. We’re also working on refurbishing the ball diamond (at Adamski Park) and we’d like to start offering T-ball and Little League.”

Though it hasn’t garnered some of the headlines that other school districts struggling to keep up in western North Dakota have, South Heart has certainly witnessed its share of growth, Mattson said.

“Our enrollment has increased the past three years or so,” Mattson said. “At one time, we were around 200 students. Now we’re at about 250, K-12. We just try to keep up with hiring the appropriate number of staff to meet our students’ needs. In the meantime, we’ve done two rounds of putting in modular classrooms. The summer of 2012, we put in five units and we put in another five units during the summer of 2013. We’re trying to stay ahead of the game.”

Doing that, Mattson said, could include plans for additional South Heart’s school facilities, though nothing is concrete now.

“We have to look forward with the assumption that our enrollment will continue to grow,” Mattson said. “We will be in the process, in the near future, of looking at a facilities need. Also, we may want to look at sharing services with Belfield. We’re not sure. What we’re hearing is that oil production in this area will continue to grow and, if that happens, more people will be moving to the area. It’s a guessing game right now. But we are looking at ways to stay ahead of the curve.”