Students traverse a structurally updated campus. Several improvements were made to our campus over winter break. In those three weeks, the AGHS facilities team repaired a gas line, and classroom flooring, and replaced asphalt outside the art wing.
Facilities director Andy Stenson facilitated the improvement process and monitored construction progress.
“So that’s step one in my role is to make sure that the funds are available, and then from there it’s my job to communicate out with staff that’s impacted whether it’s custodians or the teachers to let them know what the project is, what the impacts will be, and to do everything that we can to make sure the impact is as little as possible,” Stenson said.
Stenson and his team first tackled the faulty gas line in the science wing, which presented potential danger if not fixed.
“We had a couple of large trees that were getting in the way of the line and it did cause a leak, so we had to take the trees out and then repair that line,” Stenson said.
Though repairing the gas line was necessary, some teachers were affected by the process, including AP Environmental Science teacher, Katie Boos.
“We had some students that came on a weekend to help clean up the whole lab, they were going to do community service hours and clean up the lab with me. They were fixing the gas leak and so they had turned off the water and the electricity and the gas, so we didn’t have any way to clean it up,” Boos said.
In addition to the gas line repair, new asphalt was laid outside the art wing.
“That asphalt was in really rough shape so we did what’s called a ‘rip and replace’ where we tore it all out and put a new base down underneath it and then put new asphalt down. That was accomplished the third week of winter break,” Stenson said.
Spanish teacher Darrell Bickmore explained that these repairs were not only made for aesthetic purposes but also in consideration of student safety.
“Before there were huge potholes and a big gap. It was easy to have accidents and it looked terrible before so it’s a lot nicer now,” Bickmore said.
Despite the massive improvements made over winter break, the facilities team didn’t stop there. They’re currently working on the culinary building, which is on track to be completed this month, as well as the new landscaping and granite outside the 600 and 700 wings.
