WLDS-WEAI News tagged along with several District 117 board members on Wednesday to tour sections of the 60-year-old building that will soon be renamed Jacksonville Middle School.
Superintendent Steve Ptacek says classroom areas are being prepped for seventh graders, eighth graders and elective classes.
“We’ve got the temporary classrooms, the downstairs and upstairs of the two-story traditional portion. Those are the three areas that will start the year. At the end of the first semester, when Booney Hall and the south extension are completed, the temporary classrooms and those two sections will house all the students. The work will then start on the two-story portion,” says Ptacek.
The walls to the new gymnasium will start going up within the next two months and will be completed over the fall. The east end of the school, known to most as “Booney Hall”, has already undergone a major transformation.
“After touring Lincoln and seeing what I thought was stripped down to the walls, I walked around the corner (at Turner) I saw that all the classroom walls were down. Everything was stripped down and going to be rebuilt. I was very excited about how the building is going to look,” says Ptacek.
Ptacek says the final phase of construction for the fall of 2017 will be the conversion of the current cafeteria into the principal’s office.
“During the construction next year and into the fall of 2017, we’ve got to have a main central office near an entrance. The northeast side, where there were two special education classrooms, is going to be the temporary administration offices next school year. That will place them very close to the temporary classrooms outside, so the administrators will have close access to both those locations.”
To view pictures the the construction process, check out our Facebook page.