$10 million worth of fixes to Kingston schools
While construction on the $137.5 million Kingston High renovation plan isn’t set to begin until next spring, that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been plenty of other work being done on buildings across the district.
“We have about $10 million of work going on districtwide right now,” said Kingston Superintendent Paul Padalino, referring to relatively smaller-scale facilities improvement projects on school properties throughout Kingston.
One project not related to what the district billed as the Kingston High School Second Century Capital Plan was roof replacement on the century-old main building at the high school’s Broadway campus. While that project is on schedule to be completed in time for the first day of school, Padalino said, it’s made things difficult for some of the high school’s early returnees.
“At the high school, they bring in the cranes and work pretty much just on the outside,” Padalino said last week. “The biggest problem at the high school right now is navigating the campus and parking. I was just up there visiting, our marching band started their band camp today, and parking is an issue. But once they clear the trucks out of there we will be ready to go.”
Padalino said that in a perfect world, the project would have been completed sooner, but that it’s still finishing on schedule.
“We’re right on schedule as far as what we knew we had to do,” he said. “Would we have liked to have it done by today? Yeah. But it was a big job, and we knew we needed as much of the summer as we could use.”
Another project nearing completion is happening at M. Clifford Middle School, though rather than working on the outside of the building, crews are busy on the inside.
“We have a really big project going on at Miller Middle School, replacement of ceiling tiles which sounds like it would be a simple thing,” Padalino said. “But when ceiling tiles exist, there is often asbestos. And Miller has to be completely cordoned off for that. They have to seal off the entire building, and that’s ongoing and will hopefully be finished with that by Monday or Tuesday of next week.”
Commonly, maintenance teams spend weeks cleaning the inside a school building, getting it ready before teachers come in to make the final touches to their classrooms. At Miller, because of the ceiling tile replacement, that process is going to have to move much more quickly.
“Miller, we’ve been getting there,” Padalino said. “We have to get our guys mobilized in there to do what they do all summer in the other buildings in a couple of days. It’s a Herculean effort, but we’ve done it before. Our guys are ready and they know what they’re doing.”
Work at elementary schools
Other projects have already been completed. At Chambers Elementary, site improvements including new sidewalks and parking lot renovations have been undertaken. Harry L. Edson’s saw work done inside the building to bring the facility into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Ernest C. Myer had the most work done among elementary schools, including roofing, parking lots and ADA compliance improvements.
“We’ve had a lot of work going on in a lot of our buildings this year,” Padalino said. “Luckily Myer, Edson and Chambers are done, so we’re pleased we’re able to make those buildings available to our people. But Miller and Kingston High School, they’re still working on those.”
With the work going on late into the summer break at Miller Middle School, the usual routine of preparing a building for a new school year has taken other hits beyond the regular cleaning schedule.
“Administrators work in the summer, so we had to move the [Miller] administrative offices next door to Crosby,” Padalino said. “And we like our teachers to have access to their rooms a little earlier than they will at Miller. And it’s also wreaked havoc with our orientation for incoming students at Miller. Where we were able to do three different days at Bailey, we are only able to do one day at Miller, on [Aug.] 28.”
While in some schools, disruptive facilities improvements aren’t an annual event, staff and students at Kingston High are going to have to get a little used to it.
“The [KHS facilities plan] designs are going up to the State Education Department for review and approval,” said Padalino, adding that he’d recently been to Albany with representatives from KSQ Architects and BBL Construction Management to discuss the project with the facilities planning team at State Ed. “Our hopes are still that we will have shovels in the ground in April of 2015.”
Work is expected to continue on the High School project through 2018, with the completion of the main high school building, the demolition of the MJM Building and other site work set to finish in the final year of the project.
For more information on the Kingston High School Second Century Capital Plan, visit: https://schoolsites.schoolworld.com/schools/KingstonCapitalProject/index.cfm
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