Photos bring back renovation talks
Virtual tour shows deterioration in facility
It’s the biggest item on North Penn’s to-do list, and the pandemic year has not made it any easier to tackle.
District officials reported this week on their observations during a recent tour of North Penn High School, and the need for a long-discussed renovation project that’s been discussed for years now.
“Unfortunately, it was our second tour. We’ll try not to do the ‘Gilligan’s Island’ thing, but we had a bit of a delay with the pandemic in between,” said board member Jonathan Kassa.
In January 2019 the then-board members held a special public meeting at the high school cafeteria, immediately after tours of the complex that highlighted aging utilities, accessibility issues, and other issues with the school, which was built in the early 1970s and renovated in pieces over the subsequent two decades. The year before, the board tasked an architect with studying the needs and current conditions of the high school, and early estimates set the price tag of renovations to the high school between $138 and $175 million, depending on the size and scale, and not including the possible addition of a new building addition to house ninth grade students.
Since that 2019 meeting, much has changed: the board authorized renovations of Knapp Elementary School and the high school’s Crawford Stadium, the latter on track to finish this summer
“That’s all they do, is repairs and work at the high school.” —Tom Schneider, Director of Facilities and Operations
and the former with a new addition nearly complete that will allow phased work on the rest of
the school. 2020 brought months of an empty building due to the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by a unique outdoor graduation and phased returns of groups of students over time, and board members heard firsthand on tours in mid-March about the ongoing repairs needed, and the staff that do them.
“At the high school, we have three maintenance personnel, full-time. Two are utilities maintenance mechanics: they perform general maintenance and plumbing repairs,” said district Director of Facilities and Operations Tom Schneider.
“We also have one HVAC electrician, who manages the HVAC and electrical systems. The high school is also supported by district maintenance staff, but those three are strictly for maintenance in the high school,” he said.
As he spoke, Schneider showed slides compiled by district architectural consultant The Schrader Group into an online flipbook, showing the existing conditions from roof failures to fire alarm systems beyond their designed life, to holes in the basement floor, corroded valves and piping in mechanical spaces, and boilers and chillers already starting to need repairs.
Over the past three years, Schneider told the committee, the district has spent roughly $112,000 on supplies needed for repairs to the high school’s electrical, HVAC, plumbing and life safety systems, and an additional $227,000 on contracted repairs to various parts of the roof, chillers, boilers, pumps, motors, and pool.
“The chillers in the K-pod section of the building had to be repaired, there were
were some refrigerant leaks over the last couple of years, and the refrigerant is very costly, to put into those systems,” Schneider said.
“The ‘life safety’ includes elevator repairs, emergency generator repairs, fire alarms, the PA systems, and the one item I’d like to point out is the ‘Pool Pak,’” he said.
The Pool Pak is pumping equipment at the high school natatorium that the architectural firm has identified needs to be larger, and which Schneider said was last repaired in 201920 for roughly $14,000.
“A number of years ago, we had complaints of chlorine smells in the pool, and they were having to leave the doors open and run exhaust fans. That’s history now, the units are now operational, and provide the correct dehumidification and fresh air and temperature control,” he said.
Kassa added that those expense figures do not include staff time for the three full-time employees responsible for upkeep of the high school, which Schneider said are occasionally supplemented with outside contractors when needed.
“For example on Friday, we had a clog in a sanitary line in a kitchen. They don’t fill out a work order for that, they just got a contractor in,” Schneider said.
“It’s difficult to prepare the number of hours. We do know the three individuals, fully employed at the high school, the three maintenance people — that’s all they do, is repairs and work at the high school,” he said.
Kassa asked for details on roof repairs needed after ceiling tiles fell during heavy rains over the past several weeks, and Schneider said parts of the high school roof are five to ten years past warranty, with single-ply rubber that has glued seams susceptible to high winds.
“There may be the need to consider a project (for roof repairs), depending on how far out the renovations are,” he said.
Kassa added that he was impressed with the number of people the high school hosted in a series of COVID-19 vaccination clinics over the prior two weekends, and said equipment issues could prevent those from happening in the future.
“It really shows what a treasure this is to the community, and would be really nice to make sure to keep it open year-round,” he said, adding, “Some of the things we saw may be an obstacle to that, if we have a systems failure.”
Superintendent Curt Dietrich added that early estimates are that the COVID-19 clinics have cost roughly $4,000 in out-ofpocket costs, and state officials have indicated that federal stimulus funds could be used to offset those costs.
“We have an email indicating we can charge those costs to the ESSER funds that are available to us, so we’re pursuing that avenue,” he said, referring to the federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief bills.