Work on lobby and office started at Colfax High School

By LeAnn R. Ralph

COLFAX —  By the time readers receive this week’s Colfax Messenger, work will have already started on the new high school office and commons area at Colfax High School.

The Monday morning after graduation (graduation was Friday, May 19), work will start on the lobby and the new high school office on the east side of the building, reported Bill Yingst, district administrator, at the Colfax Board of Education’s May 15 meeting.

The entryway to the high school will move to the next door north for the summer, until the new office and commons area are ready to use, Yingst said.

The alternate entrance will be marked so people will know which door to use. Construction crews will fence off the area in front of the high school where they will be working on the new office, he said.

Since the construction schedule is tight for the $7.2 referendum projects approved last November, contractors did not want to wait until after school let out for the summer to start work on the new high school office and lobby/commons area.

Construction is expected to be finished by the time school starts in the fall.

Moving the high school office to the east perimeter of the building will increase security. Visitors to the school will have to go through the high school office to sign in before gaining access to the building.

In addition to building a new high school office, work on the lobby and commons area will include turning the existing doors into windows, moving the concessions stand to the far side of the commons by the bathrooms, and expanding the trophy cases.

The existing high school office will be turned into a meeting area and conference room.

Elementary addition

As of the day of the school board meeting, bar joists had started being set for the roof of the addition to Colfax Elementary, Yingst said.

Since a crane is being used to set the joists, depending upon the weather, the work will go faster or slower, he said.

The work with the crane and setting the joists will continue “weather permitting so they do not become a giant lightning rod,” Yingst said.

From Monday, May 15, through Wednesday, May 17, thunderstorms periodically moved through the area. The storms included a tornado Tuesday evening that leveled a mobile home park in Chetek. By Friday afternoon, so much rain had fallen that Stewart Park in Colfax, located just before the state Highway 170 bridge over the Red Cedar River, was starting to flood.

Yingst has been posting aerial photographs taken by a drone to the school district’s Facebook page and also has been e-mailing photographs to the Colfax Messenger.

With the drone photos, “you can really see the footprint of the size of the structure we’re building, the classrooms, the shape, the hallway,” he said.

The drone is expected to become part of Colfax High School’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) program, which will allow students to develop specific applications for using the drone.

The addition to the elementary school will include classrooms to replace the temporary classrooms by the elementary cafeteria that were intended to be used for a few years but have now been in use for about 30 years.

In addition to an art classroom and a pre-kindergarten classroom, the addition will include a “therapy area” for therapists who come to school to work with students, such as speech therapists and occupational therapists.

Bus maintenance

The referendum-approved spending includes replacing the bus maintenance building.

The plan is for the building to be vacated by June 1 so the existing building can be demolished in preparation for building a new structure, Yingst said.

The existing bus maintenance building is believed to date back to the 1960s.