Keeping classes, repairs apart

State has strict rules of separation in Kingston High renovation project

KINGSTON, N.Y. » School district officials are assuring students and their parents that attending classes at Kingston High School starting Tuesday will not require students to walk through a construction zone.

At a Board of Education meeting last week, BBL Construction manager Robin Scrodanus said work on older buildings on the campus will separated from student traffic.

“Students will be attending school and there will be construction ongoing on-site,” she said. “They are not going to be going to school in a construction zone because they are going to be isolated from the actual construction zone.”

Officials said the level of construction on the campus will be about the same as it has been

for the past three academic years. However, students in 2017-18 will be the first to use buildings that have been completed under a $137.5 million renovation project that was approved in December 2013.

The three floors of the new west wing and four floors of the east wing have

been declared ready for classes, with students and parents getting their first look inside the buildings during recent orientations.

Senior project manager Michael DeLima noted there are state distance requirements for separating work areas on campus from students.

“The state is really strict about segregation and no smoking, no drinking, no work being done,” he said. “That’s why we go through

the steps of building the right kind of wall protection with the right type of egress. They want to separate the students and staff from workers.”

District Director of Buildings and Grounds Thomas Clapper said work crews have made up lost time in getting work done on the Kate Walton Field House. The pool and locker rooms will be ready when classes start, but the gym will not be available for about another

two weeks, he said.

“There’s been a lot of planning around this,” he said.

“The gym was always going to be delivered the middle of September and so the sports field, that’s why we hydro-seeded so that they’d have a gym station there,” Clapper said. “They have they wrestling room downstairs, they have the new fitness area, so there are three gym stations. A lot of the fall outside activities

they would go and walk around the bus turnaround and do running there. They have the tennis courts, also, for a gym area.”

Among major projects that will occur during the first weeks of classes will be demolition of the former Myron J. Michael Middle School, which is scheduled to be taken down in sections beginning Sept. 12.

“By the first part of November, it should be down to the ground,” Scrodanus said.

“They are taking the chimney down now,” she said. “They have some work to do with cupola, the historical stuff that they have to salvage, then they’re going to come in off of West O’Reilly ... and start there. Then they’ll go to the north, toward Salzmann, and then finish up (in the middle) where the parking lot is going to go eventually.”