North Greene Unit District 3 is gearing up for some new renovation projects this summer. Superintendent Mark Scott says the school board has approved one major project so far for the summer: “They have agreed to replace two rooftop HVAC units on our high school gymnasium, the 2002 edition. That’s already been approved. We are going to get that done this summer. As far as any other major renovation projects, we have a little bit of time to spend ESR3 money. It’s not even going to be released or come out until July 1st. We’ve looked at doing some different things and we had some bids on some different projects. Well, the board said ‘These are just individual people giving us bids for some of this.’ We didn’t know how much the cost was going to be. They asked to put out a request for proposals for Energy Savings projects.”
Scott says they were hoping to replace the control mechanism of the HVAC at the Roodhouse Elementary building, but beginning proposals came in too high: “We had someone give us an estimate, a proposal to correct some of that problem where we would have more control over the HVAC units in the Roodhouse building. The board said [the estimate] seems awful high. That’s why they decided to put it out to bid for that request for proposals for Energy Savings contracts. We are going to put out that RFP and see what numbers we get back. I mean a few of the things we are talking about is maybe doing some floor replacement in our gym and multi-purpose room, some asbestos abatement, and replacement of the floor at Roodhouse, among other things.”
Scott says they are also possibly looking at bringing back art and music to the elementary. There are approximately 4-5 rooms in the Roodhouse Elementary building’s basement that have not been used since the Jr. High was moved to White Hall. Scott says that the rooms haven’t been used because they are not ADA-accessible: “We will have to put in some type of chair lift or a stair climber or something to make it accessible for all students down there if we use that space. It’s kind of the reason why it’s not been renovated. In our renovation we did a few years back, we didn’t really focus on that space because it wasn’t accessible. Now, if we can bring back some programming like art and music, we are looking at putting some money into making that space accessible to everyone to house the programs down there.”
Scott says the renovations likely won’t happen this summer, but they hope to get it going possibly within the next year.