High School Expansion Taking Shape

By Anna Hodge

& Eliza Hallabeck

Over the summer Newtown High School is transforming from a construction site to a building ready for learning, as NHS Principal Charles Dumais explained during a tour of the site on Friday, July 2.

Acknowledging, as Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson has at several Board of Education meetings, the timeline on the project is about two weeks off, Mr Dumais said the NHS expansion will be ready for students on the first day of school on September 1.

While students may be questioning what the school will look like come September, Mr Dumais had a clear picture of the finished facilities in his head as he pointed out features of the construction.

“Since the walls have gone up, you can start to see how things will start to look,” said Mr Dumais on the second floor of the expansion.

The new additions, according to Mr Dumais, include 20 classrooms, five science labs, a new child development area, a cafeteria, kitchen areas, computer labs, and renovations to the gym.

The new cafeteria is nearly completion, and the lunch period at the school will be altered; some eating habits may fluctuate in the first three weeks at the school. Mr Dumais predicted that like the first few weeks of any school year, students will be figuring out their patterns, and the number of students eating will eventually even out between the two cafeterias.

“There were previously four lunch waves,” Mr Dumais said, “but with the new cafeteria, there will be three lunch waves and we will be able to accommodate students easier.”

According to Mr Dumais, NHS students who had homeroom in the portables will now be moved to the new wing for the period at the start of the day.

“Our hope is to take advantage of this facility being open,” Dumais said.

The NHS expansion and renovation project broke ground on May 28, 2009, and the renovation portion of the project is scheduled for completion in January 2011.

While the expansion portion of the project will be finished in September, the renovation of the current building will be underway. The eight-classroom portable will be used for art and science classrooms. Mr Dumais said the four-classroom portable will not have much purpose in the next school year.

Classrooms in the expansion have a glass wall, each looking out where the back parking lot once was. Due to the classroom sizes in the new addition, the teacher’s desk in the rooms will be substituted with a podium.

With the construction workers spending six to eight weeks and ten-hour days working on the school, the new wing will be finished by the first day of classes, according to Mr Dumais.

As for the fall sports teams, “Mr Simon has taken care of schedules, and the teams will take advantage of Treadwell for practices and games,” Mr Dumais said. “Also, most of the football games will be away.”

Although the fall sports seasons will be completed by November, the gym will open along with the locker rooms, according to Mr Dumais. With renovation work for the gym in progress, the girls’ locker room is now open to the sky, waiting for a floor and ceiling.

“I can’t wait for the gym to be done so that the students can finally keep their sports equipment at school instead of bringing it in every day,” Mr Dumais said.

The new additions will supply students and faculty with “fantastic opportunities” and will “make up for some of the things we lost,” said Mr Dumais.

“I think that it will be exciting for the students and faculty to watch as the final truck drives off campus once the construction comes to an end,” Mr Dumais said.

Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson said she is also excited for the project.

“The expansion is now going to give us the room and the facilities to bring our programs to the level they were at when it had Blue Ribbon status,” said Dr Robinson.

Mr Dumais has and will continue to follow construction site developments at his blog, http://dumais.us/newtown/blog/, and to view a photo slideshow with recorded audio from the tour of the site go to www.newtownbee.com.