Air conditioning, gym refinishing part of school improvements
STAR-JOURNAL STAFF
This fall, all Tabor College students living in campus dormitories will stay nice and cool amid the sweltering Kansas heat.
And Hillsboro High School volleyball players will spend their games and practices on a newly sanded and painted gym floor.
That's thanks to work crews at Tabor and USD 410, who have spent the summer making improvements to school facilities, as well as performing routine maintenance activities.
For them, summer doesn't mean vacation.
At Tabor, the main project this summer has been installing air conditioning in dormitory rooms that don't have it — both window units and central air systems, said Terry Pritchett, director of physical plant and maintenance at the college.
For years, many of the Tabor dorm rooms have had no air conditioning at all.
"It gets a little warm in there," Pritchett said.
This summer, Pritchett and his crew have finished installing air units in California, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ediger, and Cedar. Until now, not every room in those dorms was air conditioned.
"It was a hodgepodge," he said.
Another project Pritchett and his workers have been tackling this summer is installing an underground sprinkler system on the soccer fields.
This past weekend, 41 alumni volunteers on campus for the annual "Tool Time" helped install a sprinkler system on the practice soccer field just north of the tennis courts.
Pritchett usually hires about ten extra workers, usually students, to help in the summertime, he said.
In the Lehigh-Hillsboro-Durham school district, the big project of the summer is the refinishing of the floor in the Robert C. Brown Gymnasium.
This summer, crews from Great American Hardwood Floors of Wichita have been busy sanding the existing floor. They'll then put a new finish on it, according to Superintendent Gordon Mohn.
Work crews will then paint new lines and a new logo. The walls have also been re-painted.
The gym in the middle school is also being refinished this summer, Mohn said.
Other projects around the district include remodeling the east entrance to the elementary school to make it handicapped accessible and reworking a food service loading dock.
The district is also installing new carpeting at various classrooms in all three district schools, as well as the lobby of the HHS auditorium, Mohn said.
