After a year of concrete floors and boarded-up windows, students and staff returned to an updated three-story wing with new features that provide for a more conducive learning environment.
Noticeable changes include the larger windows, including those that overlook the football field and the cafeteria.
One concern was that students would be distracted by outside activity or noise from the cafeteria. However, Social Studies teacher Pat Dolan, who has a classroom with windows facing the football field, doesn’t believe the windows are distracting to students.
Dolan noticed that students seem to watch out the windows as a “routine” for the first couple minutes before class starts and then will turn their attention back to work once the period begins.
Classrooms located on the south side of the school over the football field were assigned to teachers differently in each department.
“In the Social Studies and English Department, teachers got the choice to pick based on seniority,” Dolan said. An exception was made only if a classroom was designed for a particular class.
Math teacher Lisa Gebbie has a classroom with windows that look into the cafeteria.
“You can look into other classes,” Gebbie said. “I know it’s kind of like spying, but you can see other classes having fun and you’re not locked away in some corner.”
Gebbie only finds the windows to be distracting during lunch periods because she says the announcements over the intercom are very loud and can make it difficult to teach.
Other new features to the school include energy-efficient motion sensor lights, corkboard walls, whiteboard walls, an interactive touch-screen that provides a map of the school and a patio overlooking the football field.
Despite all the new features, students and staff recognized a couple problems with the renovations to the new school, such as traffic flow and technical difficulties with air conditioning in the old LRC area.
“Unfortunately, hallway traffic is not ideal this year,” Wiesbrook said. “We are continuing to try strategies that help with this problem.”
Some strategies include allowing students to travel through the gym and the new library along with the installation of the express hallway. However, students are no longer permitted to walk through the gymnastics room on the second floor.
“One year from now, when the north addition has been completed, there will be additional corridors that will help hallway traffic,” Wiesbrook said. “When the addition is complete, there will no longer be math, foreign language or Communication Arts courses in the flat wing or ‘old library’.”
Some students have already begun to wonder about how the new tardy system will affect them, especially if they have to travel through high-traffic areas to get to class. The new system will most likely be installed in a few weeks, according to Wiesbrook.
“We wanted to wait until hallway traffic issues are resolved,” he said.
After this new renovation, fewer students will have to travel between the three-story wing and the flat-wing, which will hopefully decrease any hallway traffic.
One change to Central that students may not know of is that of the air conditioning units being moved.
“The construction ended up having the [air conditioning units] on top of the building, which was neat,” said Robert Linkowski, district media analyst.
Linkowski was busy during the summer trying to help make sure all of the electronics and projectors worked for when school began again.
“For me, I was really [working] hard at the middle of July to the end, working with contractors to get stuff done,” Linkowski said. “To do it right, it takes time. I haven’t gotten a single complaint about projectors so far.”
However, one major complaint about the renovations has been the extreme temperatures in the old LRC area. Rooms such as 20H have experienced temperatures up to eighty-seven degrees according to communication arts teacher, Sarah Albiniak. Students and teachers alike find these rooms to have difficult learning conditions.
“I feel like the students are more lethargic and distracted,” Albiniak said.
Sophomore Jarjieh Fang agrees that it can be hard to learn. “My mind goes cloudy,” he said. To manage, many teachers have brought in fans.
Even with all the new features, staff and students may sometimes feel they aren’t always in the best conditions.
“It’s the realization it’ll take time to get this building up and running,” Albiniak said.
Many students and staff were also affected by the fact that murals on the walls around school were taken down during renovations.
“[We had to take down] the main office mural that had the redhawk and the school and said something like ‘Redhawk Pride’, and the murals that each class did that started five or six years ago,” said Bill Seiple, dean of students.
Seiple realizes that teachers and students may be unhappy to see the works of art go.
“It was kind of sad, honestly, that we couldn’t save it,” Seiple said. “The school aged gracefully in some ways and not in others, but it’s always been a special place and always will be.”
There are a lot of memories that go along with the paintings, which is understood by staff and students.
“The sad thing is it’s like when you move from a small house to a big house, years of memories – in this case five or six kids per class spending twenty hours, that’s testament to what was going on at the time – but it’s always the memory that’s special,” Seiple said, “The memory is still there, even if the proof isn’t, necessarily.”
Although the murals had to go, the construction crew managed to spare an outside wall and use it as a wall in the cafeteria.
“One cool thing [the people in charge of construction] did was they maintained the outside of the original building, where it says ‘Administration’, and they polished up the wall and incorporated it into the cafeteria,” Seiple said.
Traces of the old school were preserved and are still present in the renovated parts of the school.
“Not that the new building isn’t better, but when lots of positive things go on [at the old building], that’s cool too,” Seiple said.
No matter how new and improved the school will be, it still can’t change the fact that parts of the old school are missed by staff and students.
“We did okay with [the construction], we are managing to live with the new place,” Seiple said, “There’s probably a lot of us that are sad that it doesn’t look the same, but the school now will be just as special – just different.”