When school winds down, construction season ramps up.
Schools in Denver and Jefferson County are upgrading their buildings over the summer, with plans to have everything ready before students return in August.
While some of the projects are more or less contained within school walls, you can’t miss the signs of construction at Denver Public Schools’ Paul Sandoval Campus.
Work recently started on a new “small learning community” with 46 classrooms and assorted offices, a $66.7 million project meant to alleviate population pressure at Northfield High School due to growth in the surrounding Stapleton area, said Jennifer Song Koeppe, the district’s director of planning, design and construction at Denver Public Schools.
It will be set up somewhat like a college campus, with two classroom buildings and separate facilities for shared spaces like the cafeteria and gymnasium.
“Very shortly we’ll be up to 2,000 students and we need the space before we can grow,” she said.
The campus also will have a new performing arts building and a relocated cafeteria, but the priority is to finish the classrooms first, said Jim Staples, DPS project manager for the Sandoval Campus. The district has a goal of finishing the project in time for the school year starting in August 2020.
“We have kind of an aggressive schedule,” he said. “We want to get the classrooms up and running as soon as possible.”
Liz Mendez, director of operation support services at DPS, said the current construction is part of a plan to gradually expand the campus, since the budget wouldn’t allow for building everything at once. The shared facilities will maximize what they can build in an area where “land is at a premium,” she said.
“It’s a way to sort of maximize our limited funds,” she said. “We’re not building cafeterias that are being used for one hour a day.”
Northfield isn’t the only place in Denver getting work done this summer. DPS spokesman Will Jones said the district has 75 projects at 90 schools in the works. Some of the larger projects include redesigning the Montbello campus’ 1970s-era cafeteria to offer new seating options and different lines for different types of food; converting officers into a health clinic at East High School; and installing new floors, lockers and equipment in the North High School gym, he said.
To the west, Jeffco Public Schools also has multiple projects finishing up this summer.
Tim Reed, executive director of facilities and construction management at Jeffco Public Schools, said work has started on replacing the dirt tracks with rubber ones, and replacing grass fields with artificial turf. Some playgrounds also are getting updated equipment and a base of wood chips, which hurt less than the gravel kids currently fall on, he said.
Summit Ridge, Creighton and Ken Caryl middle schools also are finishing up construction, so they can add sixth-grade classrooms, Reed said. Each middle school has eight new classrooms in a wing off the existing building, and the construction crews will remove the walls separating them from the rest of the building this summer. They couldn’t do it while classes were in session because of the need to keep whatever Mother Nature threw at them out of the hallways, he said.
Together, those projects cost $14.6 million.
“They’re shaping up real good right now,” he said.
