Spring Lake Park ready for students

A week before the start of school, Spring Lake Park High School student body president Erik Bryz-Gornia took a tour of the construction zone his high school has become. One thing he did was time how long it would take him to make the transit from one end of school to the other. It took eight minutes, precisely the limit for passing time between classes.

"I thought it would be worse," said Bryz-Gornia of the huge renovation project that still has another year to go. "When I took the tour it didn't look that bad; I can live with it."

Spring Lake Park high school students stepped into a mess when they started school last week.

But school officials say it's a good mess.

The entire Spring Lake Park School District is being rebuilt. Voters approved a $96 million bond issue in February 2006, and construction started that summer. Now the new Northpoint Elementary School in Blaine, for grades K-3, is finished and open for students. Renovation work has just been completed at Park Terrace Elementary, in Spring Lake Park, and at Woodcrest Elementary School in Fridley. The Westwood Intermediate-Middle School complex in Blaine is slated for completion in February.
All in all, the Spring Lake Park construction project is one of the most extensive undergone by a metro-area district in at least a decade.

Construction at the high school, which was built in 1955 and holds about 1,600 students, is scheduled to wrap up in time for the 2009-2010 school year, said Spring Lake Park superintendent Don Helmstetter, as he led a tour of the work-in-progress high school last week. Until then, there will be the challenges of trying to teach and learn in the middle of a construction zone.

'Exciting chaos'

"If I had to sum it up in two words, it would be 'exciting chaos,'" said Brooks, who was among teachers allowed into their classrooms last Tuesday as workmen roamed around painting, laying sections of sidewalk cement, and cleaning up some of the construction mess. "It may take us two to three weeks to iron out any wrinkles, but I don't think it will impede the learning for students."

Brooks said she didn't anticipate any problems with noise, and wasn't bothered by noise last spring, when construction started.

One phase of the construction is almost finished. The sports and arts wing was ready for teachers last winter. It features a new auditorium, music practice rooms, new gyms and a workout room that could have been lifted from a fitness center. There are still a few finishing touches left to do.

The auditorium isn't done yet, but should be finished in time for the spring school play, Helmstetter said.

Although demolition work at the rest of the site is done, Helmstetter said, plenty of construction work remains. An entirely new two-floor section of the school was just rising walls of concrete and scaffolding last week. Heavy equipment such as cranes, dump trucks and excavators proliferated. The hallways were filled with boxes, and stacked-up tables waiting to be moved into their rooms. When everything is finished, the three sections of the high school, now separated and linked by makeshift roofed, plywood walkways, will be linked by hallways.

The district-wide makeover was necessary for a couple of reasons, said school board chairwoman Colleen Vranish. Aging school buildings all needed repair work. Also, the district, which now has 4,600 students, was attracting more.

"There was such a great deal of deferred maintenance that we had to do something," Vranish said. "Plus, the district was growing, so we had to provide more classrooms for our students."

There's plenty that's already been done in many of the classrooms. A refurbished science room has new lab stations and cabinetry, new windows and a re-tiled floor. In the corner is a unified ventilation system about the size of a refrigerator that will warm, cool and vent the room. A workman suddenly slapped a "wet paint" sign on one of the walls.

"It will be ready," Helmstetter said.

Said Vranish: "It's just one year of a lot of challenges, but we'll work through them."