By Bob Strohm
bstrohm@wbcowqel.com
Colonel Crawford ended its school year this week and with construction underway for a high school wing, the end of the current high school building is imminent. Superintendent Todd Martin provided an update on construction and abatement of the Colonel Crawford High School facilities.
With the 9-12 wing set to open in the second week of November, construction crews are already hard at work getting the building ready while also preparing the current high school for its next phase with renovations currently underway to the current high school.
“Since they are tearing down half of this building, once the project is done in November we have to get out of this area. With that being said central office had to move now because if we tried to move in November we couldn’t keep payroll and everything going,” Martin said. “So we did part of the project up front with J and F Construction. We passed an urgent necessity back in November because we had to get this done ahead of time to get all of the phone lines and computer lines done ahead of time so we could make our move.”
Along with the central offices of the district, the cafeteria, swimming pool, gymnasium, locker room, music room, and shop areas will stay at the old high school.
“With the state saying our open enrollment doesn’t count for population, they scaled us back, so we will use every single room in the district there won’t be a spare room,” Martin said.
With open enrollment numbers up, no room will be wasted according to Martin.
“There’s not wasted rooms. We are using every room because our population is up. We had 260 open-enroll this year, I have 240 wanting to come back and another 80 on top of that wanting to join us new,” Martin continued. “We can’t take them all because we are full, but it is a tribute to our teachers and our teachers, and community.”
The construction and abatement project is expected to be finished in the spring of 2016 with the abatement of the current high school being the final portion of the project.