Peggy Revell
While it will be rough around the edges, the new Robert Moore School will be ready to welcome students through its doors this Tuesday.
“We’re definitely going to be in the building,” said Raymond Roy, manager of plant operations and maintenance for the Rainy River District School Board.
“Staff will be in Monday and the kids will be in Tuesday,” he remarked.
While the school, which will house pupils from the old Robert Moore as well as the now-closed F.H. Huffman, will be ready for students, construction still will be ongoing outside of school hours.
“The biggest item that won’t be done for opening is the final sheet vinyl flooring in the classrooms,” said Roy, adding other “odds and ends” around the school, such as trim and painting touch-ups, also need to be completed.
With children heading back to school next week, Roy said construction now will occur on nights and weekends to finish up the work.
“All the work, starting next weekend, will be nights and weekends. There will be no disruptions, no construction at all, no [workers] running around the building while kids are in the building,” he stressed.
“It will just be outside of regular school hours.”
Roy added the board currently is working out a schedule with the contractor, “just trying to pick off as many things as possible as quickly as possible.”
“The flooring will take some time because we’ll have to give them a night to do a room,” he explained.
Otherwise, Roy said he is “pretty optimistic” that everything will be finished by the end of September, although this depends on the contractor’s schedule that’s currently being worked on.
“We had a very aggressive construction schedule, with very tight deadlines, and contractors worked diligently to get it done,” he said about the project, which has been underway for more than a year.
“There’s always a delay here and there, but certainly [they] gave it their best effort,” he remarked. “As with any new construction, sometimes not every single thing gets done when you want it to.
“This is going to be an absolutely beautiful learning environment for our kids. That’s the positive,” Roy stressed.
Along with the consolidation of the two former schools into the new one, board staff temporarily have relocated into the old Robert Moore building while renovations occur at the adjacent board office.
The old school eventually will be demolished.
