Gymnasium demolition, construction underway

It’s back to school in one week, but students at J.W. Walker will have to wait a little longer before they have a new gymnasium to use.
“It’s moving along,” said J.W. Walker principal, Bill Daley, about the old gym’s demolition after it was destroyed this past February during winter break when a gas leak caused a fire.
“Hopefully we’ll have the demolition complete prior to the students arriving on the third,” he added.
Construction of the new gym is slated to begin after the demolition is finished, with an estimated completion date around the end of December.
With school getting back into swing, safety measures have already been taken to make sure that students and the public are safe from any hazards the construction could pose, such as air quality.
“The gym part is sealed off from the rest of the school, there’s not going to be any issue there,” said Raymond Roy, Rainy River District School Board’s superintendent of plant operations and maintenance. There is also a company doing testing for things such as air quality to make sure it remains safe, he said, as well as the construction area being fenced off.
“Any time there’s some major demolition, we’ll do it outside of normal school hours,” added Roy.
As for being without a space to use for gym classes, the school will continue with plans similar to the ones they had during the previous school year.
“At the present time we’re just going to do gym outside, until the weather turns poor,” said Daley. Hopefully they will be able to run the gym classes outdoors for at least September and October, he said, and then they will be looking into alternative arrangements such as using the high school gym and the nearby Energy Fitness studio.
The only effect it will have on curriculum is that teachers will have to be more creative in how the curriculum expectations are met, he said. This means flip-flopping around indoor sports, such as basketball, that are usually taught earlier in the year, to later on when they’ll have the gym, and teaching outdoor sports, like soccer, earlier in the year.
“Teachers are flexible,” said Daley. “We’re going to have to be flexible and work around that for now.”
“Assemblies are going to be difficult,” said Daley, adding he’s hoping that the weather will cooperate enough to hold the assembly on the first day back to school. But they will still have to figure out what to do for events like Christmas concerts and the Remembrance Day ceremony.
“We’re looking forward to having our gym back and having school back to normal,” said Daley.