By the end of 2023, the District 186 school board could be meeting in its new quarters – in the former H.D. Smith building at Eleventh Street and Stevenson Drive. Board president Micah Miller, citing a pond that’s part of the purchase, cast the only No vote .

Springfield Public Schools’ administrative functions are scattered across five buildings now. The move will consolidate them.

The district’s due diligence committee, Miller said, “got a lot of work taken care of, but I would have liked to see a little more when it came to the retention ponds and (gotten) some questions answered, especially with this one that we are being asked now to take ownership of.” Miller, citing environmental concerns in voting No on a larger parcel of the former Fiat-Allis property as the site for the new school, said his vote Monday was “based on not knowing what we’re getting with that pond.”

It’s undetermined where the new school, consolidating the current Hazel Dell, Laketown, and Southern View buildings, will be built. Superintendent Jennifer Gill did not give a reason for the district’s change of heart about the Eleventh Street site for a school.

The purchase price for the H.D. Smith building and land is just over $1.5 million.