Contractor: All but 4 Sloan Elementary classrooms will be ready for 2020-21 school year
Construction officials for Franklin Regional’s Sloan Elementary project anticipate that all but four classrooms will be ready in time for the start of the 2020-21 school year.
“The majority of the classrooms will be completed, with the exception of the additional kindergarten classrooms on the far right side of the plan,” Massaro Construction Manager Nancy Gorgas told board members earlier this month. “All of the parking lots and the new entrance will be complete. The principal is working on a document for parents with the new drop-off procedures.”
Once the school year begins, Gorgas said, the only construction taking place will be additional classrooms near the large-group instruction space.
“Once we have the summer of 2021, we’ll be doing the kitchen and the remaining restrooms,” Gorgas said, who said there will be sufficient classrooms in place for the coming year.
“Under normal circumstances, I’d agree,” school board member Scott Weinman said. “But we don’t know what the governor’s rules will be.”
Cara Zanella, the district’s development and communication director, said there are no plans to use modular classroom trailers to accommodate Sloan students. The district’s back-to-school task force is compiling suggestions which will be sent to district administrators on June 15, and will begin formulating its back-to-school contingency plans as the summer progresses.
Gorgas said the intermediate school project is slightly behind schedule, “but not by a lot.”
“I have some work sessions scheduled with our general contractor to work through some of our delays and where we think we can make some time up,” she said.
An issue getting enough masons on-site has continued, but “we’re seeing the progress we need to have on the masonry,” Gorgas said. “We do have one accent brick that has not been put back into production, but we’re not at a point where we’re concerned about that. And with the county going into green (covid status), we expect the plant to begin doing that work again.”
Gorgas said no covid-19 cases have been reported among workers at the site.
Patrick Varine is a TribLive reporter covering Delmont, Export and Murrysville. He is a Western Pennsylvania native and joined the Trib in 2010 after working as a reporter and editor with the former Dover Post Co. in Delaware. He can be reached at pvarine@triblive.com.
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