School board hears report on $1.4M BEMS Lintel project
BREMEN— at a recent meeting of the Bremen Public Schools (BPS) board, the board listened to a report on the BEMS Lintel project, which will be funded by the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) II and III Funds, which is a grant from the federal Department of Education. This is an extension of COVID relief funds and can be used for health and safety. Currently, the school has $1.3 million in these funds left to use after using some of the money for other projects.
after meeting with architects, BPS will be requesting to use these funds in the Elementary and Middle School (BEMS) to fix the HVAC system along with replacing the lintels and windows. “The metal parts that hold up the blocks above all of our windows, many of those are failing and water is getting back in behind and running back into the classroom,” explained Dr. White. “That is a health and safety issues and ideally, they will happily approve that.”
The building will also have a facelift, since the block columns will be removed. “They’re not evenly spaced, so it looks odd. They’re an OCD person’s nightmare,” said Dr. White. after discussing options with the architect, he discovered that it would not cost more to remove them and will leave the school open for additional design options. “If we remove all of it—it’s not insulated behind it—so we’ll put in metal panels and insulate it water-tight and get a lot more efficiency, so why leave it?” Dr. White said to the board.
Much of the building’s water issues comes down to the way the building was constructed in 1939. according to a report from the architect,
there is not enough space between the interior wall and the exterior wall of the building. It is also missing a special form of insulation called flashing, which is built into a structure to prevent rain seepage and to direct a flow of moisture in the walls. “There’s not as much flashing back there. The place where they [the architect] tore it out, the flashing totally failed, so the water is just dripping down the wall. So if we get rid of the old block and everything, that will allow us to spray coat the entire interior wall so it’s waterproof, come back with the appropriate windows and appropriate flashing and then insulate. So it’s going to be a lot better product.”
Dr. White presented several of the architect’s options to the school board during the meeting, including a wide variety of brick colors, accent pieces, and more. “Regardless of what we go with, it will give a pretty good pop to the outside. So, a lot of it basically comes down to what they think the cost is going to be,” he said. Since this was a report and not an action item, the board will be discussing this further at later meetings.