Anyone who steps foot inside (or even outside) the high school this year will notice many of the changes that are currently taking place. Some teachers were relocated to different classrooms, new courses were offered and a shipping and receiving area for the maintenance staff was added to the high school.
Because of the new plans proposed for consolidating all schools onto the same campus, there
was no room at the middle school to keep the shipping and receiving area in the same location.
Some inconveniences resulting from these changes included pounding, knocking and floor shaking that students and teachers had to deal with on a daily basis.
Furthermore, two classrooms were relocated in order to accommodate the new shipping and receiving area. This slightly altered the original plans that were to take place in the high school.
Principal Timothy Dadich’s original plans were to keep all of the departments together. Currently, all instructors of the different departments are together, aside from the English Department. However, there are no plans of relocating these English classrooms in the near future.
“It’s kind of scattered,” Dadich said. “But I don’t want to move teachers again.”
There might be slight changes with other classrooms, such as the current rooms for the Physical Education department. Both Mr. Christopher Coennen and Mrs. Lisa Woods use AB1 and AB2 to teach health to their students, which is currently an issue.
“AB1 and [AB]2 are impossible to teach from,” Dadich said. “[The rooms] aren’t conducive to teaching. They can’t really even use technology in there.”
Though the layout of the high school isn’t as perfect as planned, when looking at plans for the entire district, this was a necessary change.
Gary Mortimer, Building and Ground Director, explained that placing the shipping and receiving area within the school in addition to using repurposed materials to build an office inside of the new rooms was cost effective.
The school faced a difficult choice between saving money by altering the original plans for the high school or to spend more money to build a new area for the maintenance staff. The ultimate decision was to save money.
“[The School Board] wants to keep taxes low,” Mortimer said.
In addition to saving money, this solution was the best option.
“Where [the placement of the shipping and receiving area] made the most sense was at the end of [the high school] where we had easy access,” Fuller said.
With the plan to consolidate the district onto one campus, this decision was the most beneficial to everyone.
“We were able to complete the road around through the back parking lot so that the trucks could pass through, and we didn’t have to have as much impact on the whole campus in general with trucks coming and going,” Fuller said.
The former maintenance staff room has already been replaced, housing several of the classrooms that will be utilized by the elementary students.

“The former maintenance office is now a CAD lab that will service Mr. Badamo’s Tech. Ed. classrooms,” Fuller said.
As of now, the music room, art room and CAD lab have already been completed.
The new building that will be complete in August of 2015 will be for students in kindergarten through second grade. This building will go between the end of the middle school where the maintenance room was formerly located to the end of the football field, and then will curve towards the big tree in front of the middle school.
“We’ve done a couple of projects that were setting the stage for the district consolidation project,” Fuller said. “We are doing some minor projects at the middle school…so that from this point forward we should not have to impact students at all.”
Ultimately, moving the shipping and receiving area to the high school caused some issues, but it was a necessary change.
“We couldn’t leave the maintenance office where it was. It had to go somewhere,” Fuller said.