If you haven’t been by Lake Forest High School recently, I encourage you to do so. You’ll be surprised at the attractive new additions for fine arts, physical education and athletics that are underway and soon to be complete. You can view photos of the projects at http://www.lf.k12.de.us/lfhs/.
Years ago, when planning for the remodeling and additions presently underway at Lake Forest High School, we were asked to stretch the projects out over 4 years. Given the way costs had been going up, we added to our estimates to allow for inflation. Then the economy took a nose dive and, as a result, construction bidding became very competitive.
The result – projected costs of $16 million will turn out to be more like $13 million.
Since the bonds have been sold and the money is in hand and it is clear that we will do everything promised in the referendum election and still have a surplus of about $3 million. The Lake Forest Board of Education is in the enviable position to consider additional projects.
We’ve generated a list of things that we’d like to do and will be making that decision hopefully in January. We’re sharing this information so that you may provide us with your thoughts. We cannot afford all of these things, so we’ll need to prioritize. When the final part of our current plan goes out to bid, we want to include any additional items so that we may take advantage of the current bidding climate.
The final phase at the high school (to be bid this spring with work done this summer) includes new student lockers, replacing the exterior windows, some specific classroom renovations and replacing some of the old folding classroom wall partitions with masonry walls. Final phase at W.T.Chipman includes interior walls, lockers, parking lots and athletic fields.
Following are just some of the items under consideration for inclusion:
• Brick the LFHS exterior to match the new additions
• New parking lot lighting - LFHS
• Expand and renovate library - LFHS
• Add a third serving line in the cafeteria - LFHS
• Remove walls surrounding interior courtyard and cover with roof - LFHS
• Renovate office areas - LFHS
• Install artificial turf in stadium - LFHS
• Install front entrance awning – WTC
• Air condition gym – WTC
Your thoughts are encouraged and appreciated. There are lots of ways to let us know what you think. You may comment through my blog. You may directly contact me or any members of the board of education. You can send us an e-mail or write a leter.
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2 comments:
Air conditioning in the WTC gym would be a great thing to do... that gym is stifling hot when a whole bunch of people are running around.
Expand and renovate library, and Add a third serving line in the cafeteria are also very good investments because lunch lines are long, and the library is just not what it could be.
I think air conditioning at WTC is priority but another suggestion that I think parents and kids will greatly benefit from, is a total renovation of the Lake Forest District website. The website is difficult to navigate, information is extremely difficult to find and what you can find, is outdated. If you click on the link to "Recent News," you get 17 articles dating back to 2004, with the most recent December of 2009. Under "News for Parents" are 7 articles with the most recent being last years Kindergarten registration information, Summer Reading Ideas from 2008 and the Results of the Parent-to-Parent Survey from May of 2005.
Lake Forest North Elementary newlestters haven't been posted since December and while I love combing the Photo Gallery to look for pictures of my girls, I feel it could use more organization (there are 197 photos just under grandparents day).
I greatly enjoy reading your blog and am very impressed with the districts effort to step into the next generation with Facebook and Twitter accounts. I think revamping the districts websites to be more user friendly is the next step.
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