The Rainy River District School Board approved awarding a $4.8-million contract for the expansion and renovation project at J.W. Walker School here to a Thunder Bay contractor at its monthly board meeting Tuesday night held at Donald Young School in Emo.
The contract, which is $200,000 more than the estimate the board approved in February, will see construction begin before the current school year ends next month.
Murray Quinn, the board’s superintendent of plant and maintenance, said the next step is to sign a contract agreement with the successful bidder—Finnway Construction of Thunder Bay.
Two other tenders were received, one from another Thunder Bay company and one from Winnipeg. The highest bid submitted was in excess of $5.3 million.
Once the contract is signed, the school board, the contractor, and the architect will meet to plan a construction schedule.
Quinn confirmed construction will begin as soon as possible, probably before school lets out at the end of June. The company will have to mobilize its equipment and sub-contractors first.
The plan is to have construction complete by June, 2004, allowing for a few months of finishing touches and furniture additions before the beginning of the school year that September.
Trustees passed the resolution to award the tender to Finnway Construction without dissension. Back in February, trustee Martin Darrah opposed the addition of $1 million to the estimated costs of the project, originally estimated at $3.6 million.
Darrah was absent from Tuesday night’s meeting.
Also Tuesday night, the board also presented Recognition of Excellence awards to several parties, including the junior and senior choirs from Sturgeon Creek Alternative Program (SCAP).
Interestingly, the senior choir is composed of the entire body of high school students there.
Also recognized was DYS Grade 7/8 teacher Kerri Tolen as congratulations for receiving the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario Writers’ Award for her novel study on the Canadian novel “Alone at Ninety Foot” by Catherine Holubitsky.
The award is offered to encourage members to write with the intent to publish or recognize manuscripts written for children, teachers, or others in the greater educational community.
Donald Young School itself also was recognized for its unique alternative school day schedule called “Balanced Day.”
The program—developed to reflect the findings of Brain Compatible Learning Research—is based on the premise that the optimal learning environment has a balance of task time, nutrition, and physical activity.
The Balanced Day has three 100-minute blocks of task time (classroom) and two 45-minute nutrition/physical activity breaks (20 minutes of eating and 25 minutes of supervised outdoor play).
Some of the results of the program include a sense by students that the day goes by quicker, more curriculum being covered in a more focused environment, an increase in physical activity, an increase in extra-curricular clubs (like a quilt club and chess club), and a decrease in behaviour incidents on the playground.
The board also heard the results of the most recent Grade 10 EQAO literacy test.
Heather Campbell, secondary curriculum co-ordinator, noted 70 percent of first-time eligible students pass the reading and writing components of the test (75 percent passed only the reading component and 81 percent passed the writing component).
Trustees also passed a resolution to approve the Crossroads rink project and operation agreement.
(Fort Frances Times)
Fort Frances Times
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