Palmerton school officials say school addition completion date pushed back 1 week

With the school year soon set to end, contractors are turning their attention from a 13,000-square-foot addition at Palmerton Area School District’s junior high school to renovations on the existing building.

Weather and an extended school year will likely push back completion of the project by about a week, but officials said Tuesday night that the building would be ready when students arrive on Sept. 4.

“The substantial completion date was originally set at Aug. 17, and now we’re looking around Aug. 25, but that still gives us a week to get everything in order, get the furniture back in the building and do the final cleaning,” said Tim Sisock of Barry Isett and Associates.

Additions include a junior high cafeteria, a student lounge, a media center, a new junior high office and offices for district facilities. In addition, the school will have its own main entrance separate from district facilities. Classrooms will also be renovated and include air conditioning in every room.

“It looks beautiful,” said Director Sherry Haas following a slide presentation Tuesday by Sisock. “I know I’ve heard some high school students say they want to be back in junior high. I really like the way it’s looking.”

The entrances both to the junior high office and to the district facilities office will be secured, district facilities manager Joe Faenza said.

“When you first enter the school, you’ll be in a secured vestibule and have to be buzzed in by the secretary to get into the office,” he said. “From the office, you would have to be buzzed in again through another set of locked doors to get into the school where the students would be.”

Questions did arise over the safety of the glass windows in the new cafeteria.

While Sisock said there is a motorized shade system that could cover up every window in the cafeteria, the windows are not currently bullet resistant.

“In response to the question, we can’t absolutely guarantee 100 percent protection,” board President Barry Scherer said. “We can only do the best we can.”

Superintendent Scot Engler said there have been safety discussions within the district and there may be an opportunity to do something about the windows.

“That is something the board will learn about tonight,” Engler said.

Drop-off points for parents have not been finalized yet as Faenza said a meeting with junior high Principal Rich DeSocio would further establish that plan.

Faenza credited junior high administration, teachers and staff for enduring the ongoing construction and working with the district to ensure a smooth transition.

“I can’t thank the teachers enough as they have been boxing things up so we can get right in there when the classrooms are emptied out,” he said. “My secretary did pretty much all of the furniture outfitting herself, and that saved us around $6,000 right there. We did a lot of the access control ourselves, camera work and the public address system ourselves. We tried to save money any way we could, but there was a lot of cooperation from a lot of people.”