NEW YEAR, NEW SCHOOL
Kingston High expansion recognizes past, but with future of education in mind
KINGSTON, N.Y. » With the new academic year about to begin, a ceremony to mark the opening of the newly expanded Kingston High School drew nearly 100 people who reflected on the school’s past while looking forward to its future.
The expansion, part of a $137.5 million project that was approved by school district voters nearly five years ago, more than doubles the size of the original main campus.
“It started with the recognition of a need here at Kingston High School ... realizing that, for 100 years, it’d held up pretty nicely but it really wasn’t geared for our students,” Superintendent of Schools Paul Padalino said at the Thursday evening ribboncutting ceremony.
Padalino gave KSQ Architects and BBL Construction Services credit for the design of classrooms that encourage the use of technology, and he said the companies kept the project under budget.
“They knew we had a vision,” Padalino said. “They went and spoke to our teachers, to our staff, to our community, and said, ‘What do you want this building to look like? What do you see?’”
Thursday’s ceremony represented the end of the first phase of the project approved by voters in December 2013. The second phase will include updating the 103-year-old main building, which faces Broadway in Midtown Kingston, to provide space for student support services, special education administration, fine arts programs, faculty offices and school administration.
In all, the voter-approved project includes adding 181,400 square feet to the high school campus’ Salzmann building; demolishing the Whiston-To-
bin and Myron J. Michael buildings; updating the school’s main building; and making improvements to the Kate Walton Field House. The Salzmann expansion, the demolition of
the Michael building and field house work have been done.
BBL Senior Manager Mike DeLima said the first phase represents about 80 percent of the overall project.
State Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, a 1973 graduate of Kingston High School, said the project is
significant because it signals growth in the district.
“When the voters in the Kingston school district voted to do this magnificent expansion of this campus and spend over $100 million to do so, it was the shot heard ’round the state,” said Cahill, DKingston. “After that happened, many school districts
decided, ‘We will try to do the same thing and update our campuses for the first time in years, in decades or, in some cases ... in centuries.’”
The expansion of the Salzmann building included the creation of a new main entrance to the school, at the rear of the campus, and a new main lobby that features
displays about the school’s history. The new entrance is accessible from Andrew and West O’Reilly streets, on opposite sides of the campus.
Also at Thursday’s ceremony, school officials opened a time capsule that was salvaged when the Myron J. Michael building, originally a junior high school, was taken down. The items in the capsule, dating to 1937, included a high school yearbook, a copy of the school’s newspaper (Dame Rumor) and editions of the Kingston Daily Freeman, Kingston Daily Leader and Ulster County Press. The latter two newspapers no longer exist.