Hopefully you are all rested up from reading the last post about everything we are planning to do before school opens next fall! The list seems big when you read it all at once, but we have already done a lot of the work you are reading about here. But there is plenty left to do! If you want to come and help, check the website for the next work day date.
The heating for the building was kind of a hodge-podge of an old boiler system, which is no longer there, several gas furnaces, plus a roof system above the gym. We have decided to install individual heat/AC units in each classroom. This will allow us to spread out the costs by adding them as we expand, and also means that if one unit has a problem, the rest of the building can still be used. We are also installing efficient LED lighting. There are a lot of lights in a building this size! Most of what we took out was from the 1950’s or earlier. Since every nickel counts, we have been selling everything we can at the scrap yard.
Another big task was cleaning out unwanted items. It seems that everyone who used the building brought in stuff to store, then left it there when they moved out. I have been doing a bit of that, and I have found records from when the public school was in operation! We also have the old PA system, which includes a record player, and a few pieces of very good quality consumer electronics. If anyone needs a good cassette deck, we have some. Parents, I will leave it to you to explain to your kids what a cassette deck is!
We also removed over a ton of paperwork from another business that had stored records here. So we do have plenty of file cabinets, I guess. We tossed out a number of computers, printers and other office equipment which was very old. None of them even had USB installed. This same business also left at least 10,000 books which are still in the boxes. These were from an old printing company. Not sure yet about the final destination of all the books, but we are hoping they go soon. As we get more supplies and items for the school, storage space is getting a little tight.
We have broken furniture, old chemicals, lighting, kitchen equipment, parade floats, and many other miscellaneous bits and pieces. It certainly hasn’t been boring going through the building! There are some things we want to consider using, but right now our priority is doing enough work to open for school next fall!
There are some issues outside that we need to work on as well, and some have already been done. We found out quickly that water in the basement was a problem, and some work outside took care of that. A big pile of sandbags around the northwest basement door was a bit scary, and we did some earth-moving to fix that. Still a bit more work to do there. Although there is a nice football field on the property, we aren’t planning to keep that, and will be putting in a baseball diamond somewhere. The poor old scoreboard is teetering dangerously and will need to be removed.
Space for parking will probably be an issue in the future, hopefully! We went back in history and looked at satellite images, and there was a bit more space at the north end in the past. There was a lot of dirt moving that happened when the football field was put in, and it appears that some of the parking was covered up. We hope we can find a decent surface if we decide to remove some of that dirt.
If you would like to help us by sending us a donation, or sponsoring a particular item, you can go to our website, www.uccs.school. There is a donate page there, and contact info there if you want to talk to someone to find out more.
