|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
(This article, reprinted with permission, appeared in The Columbus Dispatch on April 6, 2002.) Donations to help fix up auditoriums
in Bexley schools
Thanks to donations, work is to begin this summer to turn the high school’s 71-year-old auditorium and Cassingham Elementary’s smaller auditorium into professional-caliber theaters. The performing space at Maryland Avenue Elementary also will be upgraded. "This is a very generous community., and people stepped up at a time when it was difficult to step up," said Linda Kass, former school-board member and board member of the Bexley Education Foundation, which pledged $2.1 million for the theater renovations. Work on the auditoriums is part of a multimillion-dollar upgrade to be completed by early 2004 at four of the district’s five schools. Montrose Elementary was renovated in 1991. This week, members of the Bexley Board of Education approved $13.9 million in construction contracts, the final phase of the job. Work started in November 2000, when voters approved a $27.05 million bond issue to add classrooms, build an arts wing for the middle and high schools, redesign the auditoriums, and upgrade electrical and plumbing systems. Maryland Avenue Elementary, built in 1948, is getting a new gymnasium and renovated classrooms. The cafeteria will become a music suite, and the gym and stage will become a multipurpose room that will double as the cafeteria, said Charlene Morgan, director of the education foundation. Renovations at the Cassingham Road complex — Cassingham Elementary, Bexley Middle School and Bexley High School — include upgrading and enlarging the cafeteria, which may be used for community meetings.The two-story arts wing will offer new arts and technology programs, said project director Tim McClellan of Miles-McClellan Construction Maryland Avenue Elementary is getting a new kitchen, and Cas singham Elementary’s kitchen is being renovated.With the $2.1 million the education foundation has pledged, added to just under $1 million from the bond issue, the high-school auditorium will be transformed into a theater serving both students and the community, Kass said. "We have a strong music and performing-arts program, but it was what it was within the confines of the facilities." McClellan said the high-school auditorium will be gutted at the end of the school year. The balcony and seats will be torn out, the orchestra pit enlarged by digging under the stage, and the stage refinished. Work, which includes new lighting and sound equipment, should be completed by late January. Cassingham’s auditorium will be renovated this summer, turning it into a smaller version of the high-school theater. After the fall football season ends, the district’s stadium is to be renovated. Also, students returning to Bexley High this fall won’t have to worry about wedging bulky backpacks into undersize lockers. Part of the high-school upgrade includes replacing the 12-inch-wide lockers with 15-inch-wide models. "Now students just set them on the floor," McClellan said of backpacks.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
