PORT TOWNSEND — While hearing reports about district facilities, the Port Townsend School Board received some good news: The high school gymnasium floor won’t need replacement.
“We thought we’d have to replace the floor, but when we took a sample of it, we found it has a few years left,” said Brad Taylor, facilities manager, at Monday night’s meeting.
“So we’ll have some money to fix a few things this summer,” he said.
Taylor took a sample of the floor behind the bleachers and found about an inch of usable surface remaining, which he said would last several years.
The cost of replacing the floor is estimated at about $200,000.
The floor will need to be refinished to erase the Redskins logo and replace it with the mascot that is chosen to represent the district in June.
But the cost of refinishing is only $30,000, Taylor said.
Taylor said he also wants to level the floor; it rises up in some places, he said.
“We have the money we aren’t using, so we need to decide what to do with it,” Taylor said.
“I’d like to see it go into the high school and replace the carpets, which is really needed and is where we can get the biggest bang for our buck right now.”
Taylor said the district’s most immediate maintenance issue is the replacement of a corroded pipe underneath the high school that has caused the closure of a faculty bathroom and several sinks in the art room.
The floors need to be dug up in order to complete the operation, which will take place during spring break, Taylor said.
Taylor also presented a report on Blue Heron Middle School, which he said is in good shape, though some things need attention.
The report, a building condition assessment scoring and summary after an inspection by the state Superintendent of Public Instruction Office, was required because state money had been used for the school’s construction in 1994.
The report stated that the school had earned a 75.17 percent score as to its overall condition.
In specific areas, scores for Blue Heron ranged from 62 percent to 90 percent, getting high marks for its foundation, walls and windows, and getting lower scores for water distribution and drainage.
The highest scores were 100 percent for the data communications and integrated automatic facility controls.
“We have brand-new control systems. That’s why we scored so high,” Taylor said.
“It just means that some of these things need more attention. This is pretty typical of a building that is 20 years old.”
The same state inspection is not required of the district’s other schools: Grant Street Elementary, which opened in 1966, and Port Townsend High School, which opened in 1948, because no state funds were used for their construction, which was before the inspection program began.
But Taylor said if Grant Street and the high school were inspected, they wouldn’t score as high as Blue Heron.
In response to a question from board member Anne Burkhart, Taylor said the elementary and high schools are beyond their useful life.
The School Board unanimously voted June 24 to retire the name of Redskins “with honor and dignity” and conduct a yearlong “student- and community-based process to replace it.”
A new mascot name will be announced to the School Board at its June 2 meeting.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
