EF High School project roughly half done

District officials dispelled a rumor that classes won’t be able to start until November.

Several discussions were held about construction at Elizabeth Forward High School during Wednesday’s school board meeting amid a busy summer of renovations.

David McLean of McLean Architects, LLC, gave a summary of some of the change orders that are up for approval next week, amounting to $293,026.34.

The two-year Phase 1 construction, which involves renovations of the existing high school as well as adding a new gym and auditorium, was about halfway complete as of Wednesday.

“The site is what it is,” McLean said. “We all knew that this was going to be the most challenging summer that we have had. We tried to pack in as much work as we can, so it’s quite a challenge.”

Change order GC-9 is not up for approval yet and is around $139,290.26, according to McLean. It is about a potential retaining wall and has to do with the exact location of a main gas line from the gas company that was not located accurately.

“Now knowing the exact location, there’s a retaining wall that needed to be outplaced into there, and there’s also additional fencing as a part of that change order and some additional paving that we want to add to the contract for the most part replacing new paving so that it would be in place,” McLean said.

Some of the paving needs to be completed before students return to school Sept. 2, and some paving has to be changed due to the possible retaining wall.

McLean said the gas line actually is closer to the structure than they had hoped, so in order to have made the grades work there, the retaining wall has to be moved back. That is still up for approval and up to the ability to reason with the gas company.

Director of finance and operations Al Ragan said he talked with the gas company, and there is a six-inch line and an eight-inch line along that area. One is closer to the school building than what the drawings showed, and they could move those lines to cross over the road.

“That will give us a lot of room for moving more dirt over there instead of having that hill over there and eliminating that wall that is being proposed because that changed what we wanted to do,” Ragan said. “It would be a lot better if we could move those lines.”

President Thomas Sharkey said it would be the same amount of money to move that line, so they were better off without the wall and to move the line closer to the road.

Change order GC-10 involves undercutting, sealing and back filling in the location of the possible Phase 2 addition, which is not finalized yet but the possible drawings are. The cost would be $254,072.05.

According to McLean, that area where the possible expansion might be has pyrite material in the soil. Through Phase 2 foundation drawings, they found that the expansive soil is not suitable for a foundation.

“So if you were to leave it there, it could heave your foundations and your slabs in your building, so we know that we need to get that out of there,” McLean said. “We had some of it at the auditorium excavation, which was resolved at an additional cost which we took care of. This one is more definitive in the geotechnical report that it’s absolutely there and we know we are dealing with it.”

The excavating and the sealing of that pyrite needs to be done, according to McLean, so it doesn’t get exposed to water and oxygen, which would make it expand. They would need to back fill that area with better soil.

The reason why the removal of the soil is recommended now is because doing it under this contract as opposed to waiting has “a number of distinct advantages,” McLean said, including a significantly lower cost and the time of year.

“There’s a lot of excavation. That’s an understatement. There’s a lot of dirt and a lot of different types of soil there you can get that best soil and use that for your back fill,” McLean said. “By bringing it (during Phase 1), we make sure that’s done and time permits, and that would happen over the next couple of months so it’s done now and the next advantage, that chops that time frame off of the Phase 2 construction time frame.

“If we were to wait, then the contractor bidding on Phase 2 would carry the cost of that backfill with them into their new contract because they can’t take the chance that they are gonna somehow find usable soil because the only soil that they are working with is the very stuff we are taking out and saying that it’s not suitable.”

Other change orders up for approval next week:

• GC-7 and GC-8 for facade changes since there were some exterior items removed and added. Those are $19,897.05 and $28,557.31 respectively.

• PC-3 with First American Industries, Inc., for $2,534.29 for expansion of the loading dock to make drainage better.

• EC-5 and EC-6 with Mark Moses Electrical Services, Inc., for $33,960 and $2,460 respectively for wiring of new unit ventilators because the old wiring does not work with new HVAC units as well as a pad for a transformer.

Public questions

Several residents had questions about the construction, as the board and people working on the project tried to resolve some rumors going around.

Some residents said they heard from a district teacher that students are not going back to school until November. That’s not true, according to superintendent Keith Konyk, and there has never been a conversation about going back in November.

Clerk of works for the district Dave Macioce said the district is on track to resume classes Sept. 2, as what is happening during the summer includes classroom upgrades and HVAC work with around 80 workers there a day. The heat is scheduled to be on Nov. 1, and they will not receive air conditioning until next spring.

“It’s not like apples and apples because the project has parts of it that the kids will not access at all,” McLean said. “For instance, the auditorium will not be ready, the new gym won’t be ready. The emphasis of Sept. 2 is on the classroom areas that are getting the new HVAC and the upgrades they are getting.”

There were also concerns about parking spots, but those will all be filled and ready to go by the school year, Macioce said. Crews are currently working on some underground utilities where they had to dig up the paving, and they are hoping to be done with it at the end of July with a paver coming today depending on weather.

The football season is also still on track, and Konyk said they may need shuttle services like at graduation, which people have been “flexible and accommodating” to. The team will have to use the old locker rooms at the moment as they are getting the new ones ready.

Several concerns were made about the GC-10 change order, and the separation of Phase 1 and 2, which have been concerns in the past.

Phase 2 is for an academic addition adding classrooms and corresponding additional grade capacity at the high school. Phase 2 was considered in the general planning of the Phase 1 work, and is now in design and engineering.

A hot topic among residents is the district’s possible consolidation, which would include additional construction to the high school. It would add seventh and eighth graders in their own separate two-level wing behind the high school that wraps around the pool. The project is estimated at around $44 million, and the number of classrooms has shrunk due to the enrollment rate.

Nothing is approved yet besides drawings. Putting the dirt where the Phase 2 expansion would eliminate a soil exchange is a precaution if they do end up approving the phase.

Macioce said the dirt would go into the slopes on the side of the hill behind the school if they did not think Phase 2 was an option for them. If they delay moving dirt now, they are liable for it and it would be added onto the next contract, which increases the cost.

School board candidate Margaret Morgan said that the public does not know if Phase 2 is going to be approved, that people are not happy about the elementaries possibly closing and that the board needs to explain to the public what is going on better.

“Again, it’s not approved and we keep moving forward,” Morgan said. “When are you going to approve it, when is the public going to be aware that Phase 2 is approved, you are going to move ahead with it, that schools are going to be closed and all this is happening because there are a lot of people in the community that do not understand all this.”

Once they approve the building of the addition and accept a bid, that’s the approval of Phase 2 officially, but they want to get ahead of the work so if they decide to do a Phase 2, then they are ready to go.

Konyk said the approval will come when these plans and designs are put out to bid and a decision has been made about the addition at the high school. McLean said bids for Phase 2 will be out in October.

He added that he does not see a solution to address the mountain of needs in their buildings without some kind of cost savings with enrollment numbers down. While change is “not comfortable,” he said it is not responsible of the district financially or educationally for their kids to keep these buildings around.

“I love every one of our buildings. They all have a character, a personality, I love every one of them,” Konyk said. “But I also recognize that the reality is I don’t know how to solve that problem. We dealt with a tax increase that none of us see as pliable. How do we sink money into buildings that are in desperate need of renovations and spread that over six buildings?”

Sharkey said the area has been a neutral site because it has been a cost-effective way to hand the site and that PlanCon — an acronym for Planning and Construction Workbook, a set of forms and procedures used to apply for reimbursement — is not in place in Pennsylvania any longer.

“The elimination of Plan-Con has drastically changed the upgrading and building of new facilities in the state of Pennsylvania,” Konyk said. “This is why you see every district move to the model of consolidating elementary schools because there is no state reimbursement, the districts are on the hook for everything, the model has changed.”

Sharkey added that it’s “absolutely impossible” to maintain those buildings and bring them up to code, which they are currently doing at the high school, because that would cost around $200 million.

They would save up to around $3.5 million a year if they got rid of them, and he said it would benefit kids for future generations as they keep Central Elementary School, the middle and high schools since enrollment numbers are down.

“There’s been a tremendous amount of thought and energy put into this behind the scenes because we had to do this quickly,” Sharkey said. “We had a fire, and I am proud of all of the people that have been involved and how much energy has been put into this to come up with not just putting the auditorium back, but to fix EF for generations. I am proud of what is going to rise from this fire.”