MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Students can expect to see major upgrades coming to their schools this year in an effort to heighten security and bring old facilities up to date.
“I’m telling you, if you’ve got children in our buildings and you’ve been in there during an open house or something in the fall, the buildings look brand new when we open them up,” said Bob Ashcraft, Monongalia County Schools Safety and Ancillary Projects Manager. “I don’t know how we do it, so I have to say thank you to those folks that work hard and are dedicated every day because they really pull of a miracle every summer here.”
Morgantown High and South Middle are the two main schools receiving major renovations this summer with several large projects in store.
Morgantown High’s renovations total at $5.5 million and will include the following upgrades:
- four new classrooms
- renovated offices
- new gym entrance to improve quality of bus loading/unloading
- new fire alarms
- added space to house metal detectors
- new, secured front entrance
The entrance to Morgantown High will be completely redone in order to make it a safer place for students.
“The front entrance will be done when school starts on the 21st of August,” Ashcraft said on WAJR’s “Ask the Educators” last week. “So, if you went by today, it kind of looks like a bomb went off in the front of the building, actually on a couple sides, but the contractors are moving very rapidly. They’ve been working at it since the day school dismissed and this first phase of work will be ready for students when thay walk back in the door.”
In addition to the new entrance, Morgantown High will be getting all new windows and stairwells. Everything that was constructed before 1990 will be replaced– a total of 360 units.
“It’s really going to dress up the building and make us proud again over in south Morgantown and the area and we’re looking forward to getting all this work done,” Ashcraft said.
Renovations at South Middle consist of $4.2 million and will eliminate the modular classrooms so that all students can be kept under one roof. In order to accomplish this, nine classrooms will be added to the building as well as restrooms, offices, science rooms, and a conference area. These renovations also give the library more space and heighten security in the main offices.
Other upgrades include an additional building at the Alternative Learning Center located in Mylan Park, as well as several classroom addition to Ridgedale and an expansion of parking lots.
Mountainview Elementary, MTEC, and Westwood Middle School will see upgrades to HVAC units.
“Everybody knows the worst thing you can do is sit all day long in an uncomfortable building from a heating or a cooling standpoint,” Ashcraft said. “So we’re upgrading boilers, chillers, the heat pump units in the buildings, and in many cases we’re providing some redundancy of systems with boilers now. Where we used to have one big, large boiler we’re putting smaller, more efficient boilers in place. If one goes down, we don’t have to shut the building down for the day.”
All of the renovations are made possible by funding through the School Building Authority (SBA) as well as the taxpayers in Monongalia County with the support of the school excess levy. Other contributors are the Qualified Zone Academy bonds and energy conservation funds.
On top of the major renovations, schools can still expect to see basic maintenance.
“At Morgantown High alone, you know, there’s 1800 students roughly and you figure 150 or so in staff and at any time we may have another 50 or so visitors,” Ashcroft said. “So when that number of people are in and out of a building every day and you’re trying to keep up the housekeeping and the maintenance after that number of folks, it’s a lot of work.”
That basic maintenance will include things like floor waxing, window and furniture cleaning, grass trimming, painting and sidewalk/parking lot repairs.
While students are awaiting these repairs along with their return to school in August, they can take advantage of the Summer Sizzler Reading program every Thursday night from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.
“We like to encourage the community, local folks to come into the schools, bring your children,” Ashcraft said. “There’s a chance to borrow a book. I think everyone that attends the summer sizzler program even gets a book to take home for free so it’s just a nice reading event to look forward to int he evenings during the summer.
Those reading events are hosted at every elementary school in the county.
Story by Hannah Williams