The graduation ceremony for the class of 2025 may happen in a different place due to a planned geothermal energy project.

The football stadium is the usual location for graduation, but Superintendent Gregory Johnson said construction will probably require the school to find a new location, according to the May 9 minutes of the District 200 School Board’s Committee of the Whole. The football season and fall sports would not be affected.

In January, the Board was presented with the estimated budget and cost of the geothermal energy project, which will allow OPRF to increase the amount of clean energy used throughout the building by extracting heat from below the ground.

During the original proposal of the budget, negotiations with Veregy, a 

green energy company, came in at over  2.2% of the estimated budget ($10.529 million, as opposed to $10.3 million) ac cording to the May 9 meeting minutes. 

Anthony Arbogast, the assistant  superintendent for business services, said that this price increase came from moving the vault of the project to coordinate with the construction of Project 2 (see story page 1). 

The vault stores the energy removed from the ground before it is converted into clean, usable energy for the whole building.