What would you spend the $700,000 on for your school?

We got some grant money and I’m curious what the rest of you think we should spend it on. <br><br>Some background: We have 2 campuses. 1 for elementary and 1 for middle school. Middle school is where everyone hangs out since that is where the library, office, and lunchroom are. It also has 2 classrooms for a program we call “connection days” (yes I know it sounds like a cult). This is a once a week extracurricular class. Generally the kids are split into small groups by grade of around 10-15 kids and they pick an activity. Generally there are 1-3 teacher per class.<br><br>The campuses are connected by 2 buildings. One of the connection buildings has 2 classrooms for the teacher training (we are a teacher training school). It also has 2 rooms of offices for 5 or so of our mental health staff (we are also a mental health school). The other connection building is the gym. This is connected to the middle school by a covered walkway. The gym is used maybe 1-2 times a week and is used for rainy day recess and basketball. It has a teacher training classroom on the second floor. There is a room for our mental health staff directly under the training room. It is used for in person therapy and has a Murphy bed for naps. This is connected to the elementary side by a tunnel.<br><br>The elementary side has a full playground including a jungle gym, swings, slide, monkey bars, play structure, and 2 basketball hoops. It is in DIRE need of repair with warped boards on the play structure and a broken slide. The playground used to be fully fenced including a gate and fence around the basketball hoops. The fence had to come down for some construction and was never put back up. The basketball hoops are still fenced. Since the fence is gone the playground is open to the neighborhood. This is a problem since we have had people in the neighborhood sitting on the benches in the playground at night to drink or do drugs. This is especially concerning since we are a k-8 school. <br><br>The elementary side also has a blacktop for 4 square, hopscotch, and some benches to sit at. On the other side of the blacktop there is a teacher parking lot.<br><br>Now, for the bad part. The teacher parking lot is also used for the drop off and pick up line. This is EXTREMELY dangerous. The drop off/pick up (DOPU) line is right next to the playground and blacktop. The playground is on one side of the DOPU line and the blacktop is on the other. This means kids walking to parents in the DOPU line have to walk past the blacktop across the teacher parking lot and then across the DOPU line to get to their parents car. DOPU is the same time as recess. So we have kids walking across the parking lot during the same time as other parents are driving in the DOPU line. There have been a few close calls of cars almost running over kids since they can’t see them. We have also had issues of parents driving to park in the teacher parking lot to walk to playground/blacktop to pick up their kids since kids aren’t allowed to walk to the car.<br><br>The elementary side has 8 classrooms. 7 for regular ed and 1 for special ed. The special ed room is huge and is split into 2 classrooms by room dividers. We have 8 teachers and 1 aid for the elementary side. The regular ed classrooms have 24 desks. The special ed room is set up to seat 12 kids.<br><br>Now, what should we spend the money on? The choices so far are:<br><br>Redo the playground including replacing the warped play structure with something new and fixing the slide. Replace the fence.<br><br>Turn the connection building with the teacher training rooms into a library.<br><br>Turn the teacher training classrooms in the gym into a weight room for PE.<br><br>Hire 2 more teachers and 1 more aid to make the classroom sizes smaller. <br><br>Turn the classroom on the second floor of the gym into a science room.<br><br>Turn the mental health room in the gym into a nap room.<br><br>Replace the middle school bathrooms.<br><br>Turn the blacktop into a second playground.<br><br>Turn the connection building into more classrooms.<br><br>Replace the outdoor basketball hoops on the playground.<br><br>Replace the indoor gym equipment.<br><br>Turn the gym into 2 classrooms.<br><br>Change the pick up/drop off line to go on the other side of the building away from the playground and blacktop.<br><br>Purchase a tent for outdoor classrooms.<br><br>Replace the play structure with a mini golf course.<br><br>Replace the desks with standing desks.<br><br>Replace the chairs with wobble chairs.<br><br>Replace the teacher parking with a staff parking and put visitor parking in its place.<br><br>Get rid of the teacher training classrooms all together and just have zoom meetings.<br><br>Replace the covered walkway with a tunnel.<br><br>Turn the tunnel under the gym into more offices.<br><br>Turn the blacktop into additional teacher parking to help with the DOPU line.<br><br>Turn the teacher training rooms into dorm rooms for teacher training students to live on campus.<br><br>Turn the office space in the connection building into a break room.<br><br>What do you think we should spend the money on?