Staff
Renovations at St. Michael’s School here will be up for discussion tonight as the Northwest Catholic District School Board looks at how to accommodate the implementation of full-day junior kindergarten next year.
With full-day JK on the horizon at St. Michael’s for the 2011-12 school year, the board has received a capital allocation of $622,756 for renovations to accommodate the students.
H. Bradford Green Architects has been hired to design the renovations, and it has put forward four different options that would see the northeast wing of the school overhauled.
The first—and least expensive—option would see renovations to two existing classrooms on the north side of the northeast wing to construct a shared coat room and two washrooms.
But this option would leave the classrooms with less than the typical square footage for a kindergarten room—566 square feet of usable classroom space when the typical space is 1,000 square feet.
The second—and most expensive—option is to construct two new full-size kindergarten rooms, with shared washrooms and mudroom.
This option will result in the most space, but also will have the longest construction schedule, will require the existing portable to be moved, and bring with it additional custodian and maintenance costs.
The third option is to renovate the existing two classrooms, but add an addition of 360 square feet on the north wall of the building.
This will increase the usable square footage to 926 for the classrooms, and have only a minor impact on custodial, maintenance, and utility costs.
But it will require renovations to other areas of the school to accommodate the NSL, speech, and special education programs, and will require obtaining a variance on the property line set-back from the town.
The final option is similar to the third, but the renovations would occur on the two classrooms on the eastern side of the northeast wing.
As this classroom space is close to an existing washroom, plumbing will be less costly and no municipal variance would be required.
However, the existing portable may have to be moved, and a storage building demolished and replaced, which possibly could add $30,00-$35,000 in costs to the project.
Tonight’s meeting, slated to start at 6:30 at the St. Francis School library, will be the last for the current board.
The new board, elected in October, will be sworn next month.
Also on the agenda tonight are two presentations, including one by Judy Green from the NWO Student Service Consortia.
Don Yurkiw from BDO Dunwoody LLP will go over some of the auditing processes for the upcoming year.
Students and staff at Sacred Heart School will be awarded the board’s recognition of excellence for November, including teacher Laura Kurytnik for her dedication to the arts and teacher Michela Pauselli and the Grade 6A class for their “Children of Light” community performance.
As well, literacy coach Pat Vinczeffy and vice-principal Susan MacLellan are being saluted for their parent project that has been sponsored by the Parent Outreach Grants.
