By Oliver Lazenby
On Tuesday, August 29 at the new portion of Blaine High School, construction crews and district staff hustled to get the building ready for the first day of school the following day.
“We’re going to have a busy day,” project manager Jim Kenoyer said at a school board meeting on Monday, August 28. “[The district’s contractor] will have a cleaning crew there first thing in the morning and they’re in for a long day.”
By mid-day Tuesday, the four teachers in the new space were moved in to classrooms but waiting for a truckload of desks to arrive, district staff cleaned the dusty interior and contractors finished painting while concrete poured in the morning dried. The district also still needed the city of Blaine to issue a certificate of occupancy.
By the end of the day, nothing was on school district facilities supervisor Alan Pomeroy’s checklist that couldn’t be done with students in the building.
The start of the school year marks the end of phase one of the three-phase high school addition and modernization project, a roughly $38 million project funded by a bond that voters passed in 2015.
The first phase includes classroom space, a cafeteria, theater, space for construction skills classes and other technical education programs, kitchen, band and choir space, a greenhouse and tennis courts.
“It’s a really beautiful space,” said high school principal Scott Ellis at the school board meeting. “I really like the fact that in two years we’re going to have one door in the front and one in the back, as opposed to 45 doors, and our kids are going to be completely safe.”
Making the campus more contained is one goal for the project.
The next phase includes a two-story classroom building that will connect phase one to the school’s science building. Work on that phase started earlier this summer and will continue through the school year. It’s expected to finish in August 2018.
Phase three includes renovating the library and office areas. That should start in June 2018.
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