The New Hyde Park-Garden City Park School District buildings received a massive facelift this past summer, with upgrades made to all four schools in the district as well as a district wide switch from oil heating to gas.
“We addressed about $5.2 million worth of work this summer in nine weeks,” John Grillo, the architect who designed the renovations, said at a school board meeting Monday night. “It comes out to about $80,000 worth of work on a weekly basis.”
Improvements were made to the Garden City Park, Hillside Grade, New Hyde Park Road, and Manor Oaks schools. Upgrades to the nurse’s office, the corridor ceilings and lights, and classroom ceiling and lights were done to most of the schools. The library at the New Hyde Park Road School was renovated. The computer lab in the Manor Oaks School also underwent a makeover.
Robert Moss, New Hyde Park-Garden City Park director of facilities, operations and transportation, provided a slide show highlighting the work that had been done over the summer and thanked all the people that had worked on the projects.
“I know our people worked hard, I know my staff worked extremely hard,” Moss said. “They really broke their backs, if you see them please thank them.”
Two major projects have yet to be completed: the replacement of windows at the New Hyde Park Road school and the Garden City Park school and the district wide switch to gas.
“We’re bringing gas to all the buildings in the district which will allow us cut oil,” Grillo said.
By switching to gas, he said the district saves roughly 60 percent of what they were spending on oil, or in dollar terms about $115,000 per year.
“We’re just about ready to do the change over,” Grillo said. “All that’s left is some minor work outside the buildings and we expect to have gas up and running in the next few weeks.”
On the window replacement, Grillo said he was expecting materials to be delivered at the end of this week. He said the work will be completed when school is not in session.
