SPRINGDALE — Finishing touches are ongoing at the Springdale School District’s two new campuses, and Har-Ber High School will have a new building when the school year resumes in January.
Springdale School District
• Superintendent Jim Rollins
• 21,554 students in kindergarten through 12th grade
• 31 campuses
— STAFF REPORT
Maintenance and construction projects will continue through the winter break. Students will return Jan. 4.
Linda Childers Knapp Elementary School and half of the Don Tyson School of Innovation opened for students in August.
The elementary school project included construction of a prekindergarten center that opened at the same time. District maintenance officials are working to resolve an issue with water accumulating around sinks and damaging the cabinetry in the prekindergarten center, said Jared Cleveland, deputy superintendent for the district.
Children ages 3 to 5 frequently practice washing their hands by themselves, said Jeremy White, director of maintenance for the district. Water often spills onto the edges of the sinks. Some of the wood is swelling, and trim around the sinks is coming off.
District maintenance officials are looking into whether the problem has to do with the type of wood used or in the way the cabinetry plans were drawn, Cleveland said.
“It just means we’ve got to fix it,” he said.
The second half of the School of Innovation campus will open in January, Cleveland said. The project will give teachers and students access to three more career and technical education labs to go with the three that are now in use. A pad is ready for a large shipping container that will house a hydroponic farm, an alternative method of growing plants without soil.
The work on the second half of the campus has progressed smoothly, Cleveland said. He gave credit to construction manager Baldwin & Shell for having the first half of the campus ready for the start of the school year. Cleveland described completion of the first half to School Board members this week as “a little short of a miracle.”
Construction crews have not been on such a time crunch for the second half of the project, he said.
Har-Ber High School students in the construction technology program will have a new electrical and mechanical lab opening in early 2017, Cleveland said.
Maintenance crews started to move utilities in mid-July and a pad is ready for a premanufactured metal building, White said. The 2,100-square-foot building will take about two weeks to install. It will require electrical work and the installation of heating and air conditioning once the building is up.
The new building will provide students with a dedicated space where they can practice and learn skills for working with electricity and plumbing, two high-skilled, high-paid disciplines, said Stowe Hoffius, an instructor for the construction technology program.
“The field is wide open,” he said. “The whole point is to try to turn out more and more kids that are set up for apprenticeship programs within the trades.”
The district has paid for the project with some money from a federal Race to the Top grant, and about a dozen companies have donated money or equipment for the project, district and school officials said.