Over the summer and into this school year, you may have noticed scaffolding around the back side of the building off of the E wing. I noticed it too, and like others I have been curious about it, so I decided to find out. There was some assumption near the beginning of the year that the construction would not take long, and it would be done by Thanksgiving or Christmas at the latest. Sadly, this is not true. To find out about the construction, the first person I had reached out to was the principal of LHS, Mrs. Nemeth. When I emailed her with the questions, she had me reach out to the Superintendent, Dr. Tiano, as she did not have any answers. Dr. Tiano did have some answers, though, so I found out part of what is going on.
As to why the construction was started and they fenced it off with scaffolding, over the summer the facilities staff had noticed that there were cracks in the exterior wall of the E Wing. This caused them to immediately get in contact with a structural engineer, the town’s Building Commissioner, and the town’s Fire Inspector. Together, they found out that the exterior brick is separating from the cinder block wall, and poses a danger of falling bricks, which is why they fenced it all off to keep people away.
What they have done so far is the fencing to keep people away from the wall, then put scaffolding with a protective cap over the door and walkway to protect it so it can be used in case of emergencies, as well as completed the work from inside the classrooms in the staircase to block off the area from the rest of the building’s structure.
Unfortunately for the classrooms in the staircase, they are completely unusable until the construction is completed in its entirety.
There is no timetable as to when the construction will be completed, because the project, as to what they are actually going to be doing, has not been defined. They are currently waiting on design and estimates from architects to determine where they need to go from there. It can take anywhere from a few days to sometimes a few months to get designs and bids, especially since they are looking for some from multiple architects, and then they have to decide. Currently, it is unknown what the scope of the project is going to be, and what the funding will be, as well as who is going to be doing the construction since they are still in the process of getting design bids and estimates, and have not yet put the job out to contractors.
As mentioned by Dr. Tiano, “The goal is to ensure that we have the right plan so that the issue is permanently fixed.”
For the foreseeable future, the staircase and classrooms at the end of the E Wing are going to be completely unusable until the situation has been fixed.
