Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
As the number of vehicles parked outside have increased, the number of workers inside Colfax Junior-Senior High School has also as construction enters the final stretch before students return for a late start of Sept. 9.
An estimated 35 subcontractors were on site Monday; drywall, flooring, cabinets, HVAC, electrical and the piercing sound of concrete cutters.
“A little bit behind,” said District Superintendent Jerry Pugh. “But not anything that would stop us from getting school started.”
Classrooms now have finished walls and floors, with exposed beams and HVAC pipes above, including silver lines and coils with soon-to-be functioning sprinkler heads.
On the walls are new white boards.
“We have real white boards instead of shower boards,” Pugh said. “Exponentially, every day there's great progress. The focus is on classrooms. The community room, the band room, it's gonna be close for those. Overall it will be a rustic process, but it's gonna be fine, absolutely safe.”
The school's front entry foyer has taken shape too, as seen on architectural renderings; thick glass doors, to close and lock at 8:30 a.m. every morning at the first bell. To one side is an office door which visitors will have to pass through, first to be buzzed in by an office employee seeing them.
New flooring is being laid down in the cafeteria. The auditorium is a temporary storage area with pallet stacks of ceiling panels and small conduit pipes protruding from the floor to mark where the sound board will go.
The high school gym has not been touched.
Down a long hallway and around a corner – in which workers finish pedestals for lockers due next week – the STEM lab is near completion, cabinets in place, less tables and chairs, with no roll-down door to open to the courtyard. It was cut due to an estimated cost of $30,000.
Adjacent is the new junior-high commons area, bare, and a wide new storage room for the maintenance department in the rest of what was the former shop.
Above it, on the second floor, the library is unrecognizable with an outer area for group work and smaller inner library.
“The space wasn't all being used,” said Pugh of the previous library.
He noted less library space is needed overall in the online and electronic publishing era.
Outside the building, down from one end of the gym, by to the courtyard, dirt is dug up to expose the end of an 18-foot long fuel tank, which workers found 10 days ago while digging out conduit.
The tank will stay but an estimated 2,200 gallons of kerosene will be pumped out and the tank cleaned. It will be filled with gravel and a cement mixture.
Roofing and gym floor subcontractors are at work at Jennings Elementary.
The roof men installed long standing-seam metal roofing Monday, made on site from 2,200-pound metal rolls delivered to Colfax.
The facia – side panels of the roof – is also being done with more soffit to come next, the horizontal underside.
Inside the Jennings gym, workers re-sanded the floor with painting lines and stenciling wording set for Tuesday.
At the school board meeting Monday night, board member Brian Becker asked Pugh if he was hearing many questions and concerns about the construction.
Pugh talked further on the subject.
“We're gonna be in the building. That is gonna happen,” he said. “Doors and locks, the fire suppression system will function. HVAC is going to be exposed when you walk down the hall. People say, are you gonna delay it for a week? For what?”
Pugh noted the Colfax fire chief has been walking through the building.
“We're not gonna leave anybody unsafe in that building. But it will be unfinished,” Pugh said. “Fresh air flowing, water for the sinks and to flush toilets, fire suppression and we're good to go. The plan B is plan A.”
He noted that classrooms will be “buttoned-up” by the end of September with crews working in evening hours and/or weekends.
No further work is happening in the auditorium after earlier removal of seats, extension of the stage, re-flooring and asbestos abatement.
In September, workers are expected to return to the auditorium, projected to be done by mid-November.
“Maybe not, but it will be by Jan. 1,” said Pugh.
The annual high school fall musical has been moved to the spring.
The overall schedule for construction, paid for by the $18.9 million bond voters passed in February 2018, sets final completion for August 2020.
Next February, work begins in the high school gym and special education areas, old science classrooms and laboratory, with roofing at the junior-senior high school next spring.
“The fire system is the key,” Pugh said of the Sept. 9 start date. “If we have to, we delay it a week and make it up in the summer.”
See picctures on Page 4.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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