Dear Central Families and Community Members,
Designs, redesigns, and forward-moving progress are taking place with the bond renovation projects at our Secondary School building.
A revised design for our secondary school building. (Pictured above) This new design reflects several changes we are making in order to continue to be good stewards of your tax dollars.
As you will see, alterations have been made to the front entry as well as some other spaces in the Middle and High School building due to significant projected inflation increases in the bids. Instead of moving forward with the existing plans and risk running over budget, the district reassessed the bids and chose to streamline the engineering work in certain targeted areas. The areas targeted for redesign include the front entry, outdoor storage, the lower-level high school academic wing, and switching a few classroom locations.
These changes are necessary for one reason: inflation. Although the changes are designed to significantly lower our construction costs, the district wants to assure our community that these basic changes will not affect the overall concept of the bond and will keep all academic, athletic, and art spaces intact.
The front entry. Due to significant costs associated with the water and sewer lines on the boulevard and in needed soil corrections on the hill in front of the building, a ground-level front entry was abandoned for the new elevated entrance seen in the rendering above.
The outdoor storage area. This space below the multipurpose room and weight room has been right-sized from 2000 square feet to 1200 square feet. This resizing will not affect the usability of the wrestling room, locker rooms or weight room. Yet with the reduction in size, the entire area will now able to be constructed out of precast concrete rather than masonry brick which will provide substantial cost savings.
The basement. The lower level of the academic wing of the high school is currently made up of several floor elevations. Instead of changing the various elevations, the district will leave them as is in the new open study area.
The classrooms. In three areas of the new building, the district is flip-flopping the functionality of certain rooms in order to use existing pillars to support the roof weight rather than installing steel beams. For example, in the high school upper academic area, a classroom was created near the open study space. To have that classroom in that particular spot, a major steel beam was needed in order to avoid having pillars in the middle of a classroom. Instead, the district is flip-flopping that room with the staff planning area so we can eliminate the beam and put pillars in the walls of a non-classroom space.
The timeline for this project. A few adjustments have been made to better accommodate work crews and product accessibility. This summer's primary focus is to get the elementary and high school academic spaces completed so students can return to school as planned in September 2023. The basic shell for the gym addition is expected to be completed by the end of summer 2023.
During the winter months of 2023-2024, crews will work inside to complete the finishes on the gym addition. Finally, in the summer of 2024, the middle school renovations will be completed, marking August of 2024 as the anticipated project completion date.
We are grateful for your overwhelming support. Yet we know that our communities did not give us a blank check. It is our job to make sure the scope of the work continues to be in line with the funding provided by the taxpayers in our community. As trusted stewards, we aim to fulfill our promise to keep local property taxes in the middle range of neighboring school districts.
For ongoing information about this project, please visit our Thriving Future website @ www. https://www.centralfuture.org.
In partnership,
Tim Schochenmaier
Superintendent