Renovations on one Jacksonville elementary school got started last week while another winds down.
Vision 117 Coordinator Bob Roads says that work on Eisenhower Elementary School began last Friday: “They’ve got a small crew in there now, but probably as big as they need for the work that’s going on. They are doing essentially demolition work: taking down light fixtures, pulling up carpet, removing doors, removing gutters, getting ready for the construction part of the project. They appear, right now, to be pretty well organized. We will just have to wait and see how that plays out.”
Superintendent Steve Ptacek says he feels much more comfortable about Eisenhower’s work getting done in a timely manner due to the depth and scope of the work being done: “Eisenhower is a little too early to tell right now but I feel really good about that project over the whole year. It’s nowhere near as intensive as Washington was. I think that it’s going to be a very good project that should go very smoothly. Washington is really coming along. I feel very confident now that the teachers will be able to be in and getting the classrooms ready by, we hope, July 31st, but it might me a week after that. We would like to give them two full weeks if they want to come in, but it might only be one week. We will know more about when that will happen within the next week.”
Roads says that some items for Washington Elementary will not be done by the time the school starts due to various delays on work: “There’s still a myriad of small issues that have to be resolved. The elevator people have been working on the elevator. I would assume they are pretty much going to finish that up this week. That required the masons to do some work. They’ve done it. The flooring crew couldn’t complete their work until the elevator was in place. A lot of this stuff was stored in the lobby area for the elevator work. As that stuff is leaving the lobby, that will allow them the opportunity to get in the lobby and start finishing up that work there. One of the other issues we had in terms of outstanding work was the lockers. The issues with the lockers was a fairly mundane issue. It had to do with the space pieces in between the lockers. They vary in length and go around corners. For the most part, they didn’t have the right size material and the material they had couldn’t be bent to go around the corners.”
Roads says that lead contractor Johnco is now likely to take over the subcontractor’s work on the lockers to get them finished and ready on time for school. The gym floor is anticipated to arrive today for Washington, which will place the floor’s installation out at least a week until it gets temperature acclimated to the building. Roads says that Johnco is now anticipating overtime for now until the completion of the project at no extra cost to the district.
Roads says the last remaining big piece is Washington’s electrical panel system: “The electricians now, I think, are looking to potentially doing both the inside and outside units at the same period to limit the shutdown of the school. They don’t want to schedule it until they have a firm date for the delivery of the material. So, that’s still up in the air a little bit right now, but the temporary electrical panels will suffice.”
Johnco says that they anticipate student occupation of the building to be August 8th. First day of student attendance for the district is August 16th.