Bentonville West expansion plans focus on athletics and arts as Alice L. Walton partnership eases academic capacity needs

District officials on April 20 outlined a phased expansion at Bentonville West High School that would add band space, track and turf improvements, and new locker‑room and fieldhouse facilities while relying on a partnership with the Alice L. Walton Foundation to provide additional academic seats.

At the meeting, Dr. Schwanhauser said the West campus has grown rapidly since opening in 2016 and that prior additions — stadium, locker rooms and classroom wings — totaled roughly $22 million and were completed without seeking a tax increase. He summarized options the district’s architects, Height Jackson, presented in January, saying earlier academic‑heavy options ranged from about $77 million to $149 million. "In November 2025 the Alice L. Walton Foundation offered to provide a building that will house 1,500 academic seats," he said, meaning the district no longer needs to build the large academic additions formerly considered.

That change leaves athletics and arts as the primary local needs. The current proposal under development has three volumes: a band expansion (increasing band classroom and storage, upgraded AV and lighting), a locker‑room and storage building with a turfed practice field and lighting, and fieldhouse revisions that expand football and trainer facilities and add coach offices and film rooms. Dr. Schwanhauser said the band room would grow from about 2,998 to 4,837 square feet and the locker complex would add about 12,922 square feet of new construction.

Architects and staff estimated the three volumes together are likely to come in at roughly $14 million — a substantially lower figure than the earlier academic‑plus options — and said they will present drawings and a guaranteed maximum price (GMP) for board consideration at the June Board of Education meeting. If approved, the locker‑room building could begin at once and be complete by late spring 2027; band work would follow and is expected to take about a year because it shares a wall with active teaching space.

Board members pressed staff for capacity and timeline details. Dr. Schwanhauser said the district aims to add roughly one hundred more band participants with the expansion and that the work is intended to provide “at a minimum of a decade” of runway for athletic and arts spaces. He emphasized the plan assumes students will take academic coursework at the Alice Walton facility and continue athletics and arts at their home campus.

The architects’ analysis compared locker‑room square feet per athlete and indoor covered practice metrics across campuses and through 2029–30 projections. Staff noted the plan does not include an additional auxiliary gym at West — a previously considered option that would add significant cost — because current covered indoor practice per athlete is comparable to Bentonville High School and the architects judged the auxiliary gym unnecessary at this time.

Next steps: Height Jackson will provide detailed drawings and GMPs in June for board review, and staff said construction phasing will be scheduled to open completed spaces for the 2027–28 school year as feasible.