Why renovate Central, yet leave Madison? Wasn’t Central renovated recently?
Post date: Jul 21, 2013 3:02:26 PM
Most voters want Central to still serve students
District voters have twice rejected bond issues which sought to move students out of Central Middle School, including the failed bond issue of February 2012. This bond proposal recognizes the historic importance of Central Middle School and its downtown neighborhood location, keeping the building as a functioning school but addressing the shortcomings of a campus composed of sturdy buildings constructed in 1917, 1925, and 1956.
Didn’t we just fix up Central?
Twenty years ago voters approved a bond issue to do limited renovations at Central. In 1994-95 the building’s wood floors were refinished, new climate control units were installed in its classrooms, the corridors were refinished and new doors were installed, the exterior was resealed, interior plaster was repaired, and the north building was re-bricked. However, normal wear-and-tear on the building over the past 20 years means that the exterior envelope needs to be resealed, finishes need to be refreshed, and some of the climate control equipment is due for replacement. The new bond would also correct functional layout problems which were not addressed in the 1990s.
So what does this bond do at Central?
A critical academic problem at Central is its undersized cafeteria: the lunchroom is so small many students must currently take lunch in the middle of a class, returning to that class after eating, impairing instruction and their learning. The bond issue would renovate the entirety of the north building into a larger cafeteria/commons. The vocal and instrumental music classrooms at Central are too small for those programs’ modern-day enrollments. A thorough remodeling of the ground floor, which currently has two outdated gymnasia with awkward and unpleasant access, will free up space to provide larger rooms for the band, choir, and orchestra programs. A new gymnasium will be constructed and attached to the building, and the ground floor renovation will relocate the office and provide a secure entrance to the building. All corridors and classrooms will be refinished, including refinishing wood classroom floors and smoothing and retiling the corridor floors, repairing and repainting walls, and new classroom ceiling tiles. Classrooms will be equipped with electronic white boards, the same technology already available in all elementary school classrooms. Faltering motors and valves in the HVAC units installed almost twenty years ago would be replaced. The boilers and chiller, which are approaching the end of their useful life, will be replaced. This bond would again re-seal the building envelope against water infiltration by tucking and re-pointing the masonry and replacing the roof. [Due to funding limits from the district's bonding capacity, the 2013 bond does NOT address the auditorium at Central; it concentrates on the other areas which see daily use.]
Madison has design limitations which would make a remodel unrewarding
Madison is much newer than Central, but it was built in the popular “California” style of the 1950s with a great deal of single-pane glass panels, freestanding brick walls, and fire-resistant exterior overhang panels. This design is ill-suited to Oklahoma’s climate; many glass panes have been painted over or replaced with wood panels due to light and climate control problems. Many of the building’s materials have not aged well.
The school also has an awkward combination cafeteria/auditorium with uneven floor levels, and its gymnasium floor is frequently damaged by groundwater infiltration. While a great deal of money could be put into refreshing the building panels, replacing all of the windows, and trying to solve the problems in the cafeteria, auditorium, and gymnasium, the end results would still be underwhelming.
Renovate Mid-High into a robust replacement for Madison
The Mid-High is adjacent to Madison. It opened in 1967 as Sooner High School and is a much more robust structure. It would make a far better middle school building than Madison after bond-funded renovations to provide a secure entrance, promote grade-level teaming, upgrade the classroom air conditioning, create a larger cafeteria/commons area, replace 600 older lockers, update some interior finishes, replace a couple of old science labs, and renovate the locker rooms while creating music practice rooms. The district’s Long Range Facilities Planning Committee, after consulting with architects, determined the best course of action would be to ask taxpayers to fund enlarging the high school, which both reduces school transitions and improves district efficiency, while renovating the Mid-High into a robust replacement for Madison Middle School.
