Advisory teams for Chartiers Valley school renovation plan to tour facilities in D.C. area

The Chartiers Valley School District is using an advisory team of administrators, students, teachers and architects to determine the scope of a renovation/construction project at the middle school and high school.

The district is working with Downtown-based architects, IKM Inc., which has brought BLRB Architects, based in Oregon and Washington, as consultants for the project.

The 486,000-square-foot high school/middle school complex was built in 1970; its last renovation was in 2006.

Matt Hansen, project manager with IKM, said the firm looked to BLRB because of its expertise in school construction projects. While IKM has done work at higher-education facilities such as Slippery Rock Universitys Physical Therapy Building and alumni centers at West Virginia University and Grove City College, it has not done much work with school districts.

IKM is known for its work designing health care facilities, such as St. Clair Hospitals outpatient center in Peters and Childrens Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMCs outpatient center in South Fayette.

Mr. Hansen said one of the main focuses in the process of renovating or constructing a school is to look to stakeholders for newer ideas.

The reality is that all of this has been done before, Mr. Hansen said about traditional school construction.

The project has not been specifically defined yet, but it might include a mixture of demolition, renovation and new construction.

In September, school design advisory teams that include parents, taxpayers, teachers, administrators and students began to meet to talk about what they want in the school.

On Tuesday and Wednesday members of some of the advisory teams will tour several schools in the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore areas to glean new ideas.

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Advisory teams for Chartiers Valley school renovation plan to tour facilities in D.C. area