Designs for the first wave of major capital projects included in the Roslyn School District’s $41.3 million bond will be sent to the state Department of Education for approval later this month, officials said.
Erik Kaeyer, the vice president and design principal for the firm KG&D Architects, which has worked with the district to develop its capital plan, said Monday that design submissions for projects at East Hills Elementary School and Roslyn Middle School, as well as for the conversion of the district’s maintenance building into a new bus garage, could take up to six months to receive approval. Construction would then begin in summer 2015.
Kaeyer said the projects have all been designed according to costs estimated prior to the bond’s approval in May.
“These are not bid numbers, nothing has gone out to bid,” Kaeyer said. “Sometimes when you do additional surveying of the conditions, in some cases you find you need to do more to remediate what an existing problem is, and other times you’ll see it’s not as much as you planned. Not every line item is going to be exactly on target, but they’re tracking on budget.”
Front and classroom doors at each school campus will receive uniform handles and locking mechanisms for increased security, Kaeyer said.
At East Hills, new entrance canopies, a security checkpoint and secured vestibule have been planned, as well as renovations to its library and computer laboratory into 21st century media centers, Kaeyer said.
Additionally, Kaeyer said East Hills will receive site work and paving renovations as well as various classroom upgrades throughout the school. The installation of air-conditioning has also been planned for all second-floor classrooms, the cafeteria and library.
The district must construct its new bus facility at Harbor Hill prior to demolishing its current garage at Roslyn High School, Kaeyer said.
Kaeyer said the new facility would be used for maintenance purposes but not to store, wash or fuel buses.
Several environmental initiatives, such as the installation of photovoltaic solar panels, are also being planned for the new facility.
The least intensive work in this wave of projects, Kaeyer said, is to Roslyn Middle School, which is slated to receive new pavement to the front and side of campus, new lighting in its cafeteria and improvements to its drainage system that would help divert water away from the building.
Kaeyer is scheduled to present the second wave of bond projects – at Harbor Hill and Heights elementary schools and Roslyn High School – during the board of education’s Nov. 20 meeting.
“Those projects are a bit more design intensive,” he said. “There’s going to be more going on at those campuses, so to stretch things out approval-wise, we determined we would do this in two waves.”
