Chaminade High School ready to break ground on science building

Noah Manskar

After finishing two buildings in less than a year, Mineola’s Chaminade High School is ready to break ground on a third.

The Catholic boys’ school got final village approval Wednesday for a new 36,000-square-foot science building, the latest project in a multi-year plan that’s now focused on ramping up academics.

“We have a great program, we just don’t want to get stagnant,” said Bro. Thomas Cleary, the president of Chaminade.

The school’s earth science, biology, chemistry and physics classes will move into the $13 million building, dubbed the Science, Technology and Research Center.

The facility will contain updated classroom labs, as well as Science Olympiad and research laboratories for “higher-end” projects, Cleary said.

It will sit on the northwest corner of Chaminade’s campus at Emory Road and Jericho Turnpike, adjacent to its Gold Star Stadium. 

Cleary said the school plans to start prepping the site for construction within the next two weeks and expects to finish the project by the summer of 2017.

The school conceived the project about a year and a half ago as part of the academic phase of its “Advancing the Mission” development campaign, Cleary said.

When it evaluated its academic programs, he said, the school found the most room for improvement in its math and science curriculum.

Instead of just renovating its science labs, which haven’t been updated in more than 20 years, Chaminade decided to build a brand-new facility to make sure its graduates a head start breaking into “booming” science and technology fields,” Cleary said.

“We wanna make sure that we have our young men prepared for that market,” he said.

When the science labs move, the school will use some of the former classrooms as meeting and office space, and use others to expand its ministry center and store.

Now in its fourth year, the development campaign has also included the construction of the $2.5 million football stadium, completed in September 2014; and its Saragossa day retreat center, which opened in May.

One resident at Wednesday’s public hearing about the project raised concerns about parking problems in the area, which others have echoed about past Chaminade projects.

Village of Mineola Mayor Scott Strauss said the school has always been “incredibly supportive” of the village’s parking enforcement efforts and goes to great lengths to be “good neighbors.”

“They are always willing to pitch in with community service with their students,” he said, also noting that the science building won’t exacerbate parking issues. “We have a good relationship and we’d certainly like to continue that.”

As part of the development campaign, Cleary said, Chaminade also recently updated its wireless Internet system to support widespread use of iPads in its classes. All freshmen are using them in class this year and they’ll expand into the rest of the school next year, he said.

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