Returning Waseca students will see results of summer work – Southernminn.com

As the beginning of the new school year approaches, the first phase of construction work at Waseca Junior Senior High School is wrapping up

Superintendent Tom Lee says the project is right on schedule, and construction work at Hartley Elementary School, the Central Building and Waseca Intermediate School is done.

Work at district buildings has included replacement of old boilers at Hartley along with other renovation work and security upgrades at all buildings. At WIS, for example, the main office has been reconfigured so that there is a clear sightline to the vestibule between the exterior doors and the doors leading into the school.

Phase one of construction at the high school is wrapping up, with just shy of 38,000 square feet renovated.

The new main entrance of the east side of the building will be ready but construction on the new office will continue. It is on schedule to be completein time for the Minnesota Educator Academy in October.

Phase two of construction begins next week. That's constructing classrooms on the west side of the building in old C wing and the northern part of B wing.

Construction on the new performing arts center will also continue into the school year. Lee says the structure should go up rather quickly because it's precast concrete. The goal is to seal it up by Nov. 1 so workers can continue construction on the inside over the course of the winter.

Phase two will be turned over around the holidays, around which time phase three all of A wing and the southern part of B wing will see construction until May.

The rest of the building the girls' locker rooms, the industrial tech and ag areas and the central part of building, including the music rooms all the way down to the new parts of phase one will be renovated next summer.

Students returning at the start of the year will see some new rooms, including seven science classrooms with finished case work, chemically resistant floors, windows to catch natural light and shared prep rooms.

"It's a 2017 science lab instead of a 1972 science lab," Lee said.

Outside the new rooms are breakout spaces, areas included to allow students to conduct classwork in open seating areas.

Among the objectives for the district were to bring in as much natural light as possible and install a balanced HVAC system.

"One of the issues that we had in the building was that you'd go from one room that was very hot to another room that was really cold," Lee said.

The pipe and duct work for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system has been completed to address that.

Outside of school construction, the district this year is rolling out one-to-one Chromebook devices for all 7-12 grade students.

Waseca School Board earlier this year decided to provide Chromebooks to high school students for free. The district has since developed a responsible use document that says anyone who breaks a device must pay for it.The district will also have device covers for sale.

Over at the Central Building, a new playground for the preschool will be installed by September. The junior high will this year occupy all of the second floor and most of the third floor of the Central Building. They will come back to the high school next year.

The district has added new access sidewalks to the home and visitors stadium bleachers and made the home bleachers handicapped-accessible.

Waseca welcomes over 21 new staff members. A permanent dean of students position was added to the high school, and Waseca High School Assistant Principal Jason Miller will be the full-time junior high principal at the Central Building this school year.

The district has received an Alternative Delivery for Specialized Instructional Services (ADSIS) grant, which is part of a program that provides aid to school districts in an effort to reduce inappropriate referrals to special education. This grant allowed the district to add six new staff positions, three of which the state paid for and the other three paid by the district. Four of the six are behavior intervention specialists.

Reporter Jacob Stark can be reached at 837-5451 or follow him on Twitter @WCNjacob.

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Returning Waseca students will see results of summer work - Southernminn.com