CHS restrooms, chem labs among priority projects

Carson High School students returning in August will find remodeled restrooms and chemistry labs.

Carson City School District’s Bond Oversight Committee is focusing this year’s capital dollars on fixing its largest campus. Mark Johnson, district capital and special project manager, said the three biggest summer projects will be about upgrading the Carson High’s bathrooms and chemistry labs and increasing door security for other campuses.

The remodel applies to all four restroom blocks — two on each floor — in the central core, and two blocks at the north end and two on the south end. These will be gutted and refurbished from a gendered layout into an open style.

“We have a limited schedule during the school year and we’ve got to do it during the summer,” Johnson said. “Schools get out, the contractors get in and the south bathrooms will have to be ready for the students. But the north bathrooms, we’ll let them work on those and they’ve got an extra two months to work on those.”

During operations, Johnson said the CHS locker room area will be available for temporary bathroom space.

Carson High’s chemistry labs 213 and 214, a total of four rooms, also will get an upgrade near the south bathrooms on the second floor, Johnson said. The project was budgeted for $200,000, although the engineer’s estimate was $600,000.

“We have three add-alternates on that,” Johnson said. “If the cost comes in and we go out to bid, that will be a design-bid-build. When we do that, we’ll go out to bid.”

The bid process is scheduled for March 24. Bids are due April 5 and will be awarded April 23. The summer project schedule is to begin work June 3 and have the chemistry labs finished Aug. 12, a week before school starts to allow for teacher preparation.

“We’re going to be putting in new lab tables and taking old ones out,” Johnson said. “We’ll be putting in two new emergency showers in case kids get chemicals on them, and one of the add-alternates is new emergency showers in the two other classrooms.”

The other add-alternate is new flooring for the other room, which was broken up as half-lab, half-classroom.

“My guess is these are the original rooms,” Johnson said about the labs’ last renovation.

Johnson said the school’s north student parking lot also will be refreshed this year.

“We did a facilities assessment about eight years ago, and we used that to reseal crack seals, playgrounds and our concrete and roofs,” Johnson said. “It was time to do our north student parking lot.”

The east lot, which receives more student traffic, will be reconstructed with a 4-inch over 6-inch aggregate base. The west lot, which is not due for a full repair, will be rehabilitated and given a crack and slurry seal. The bond budget provides $800,000 for the work.

The parking lot’s schedule will remain the same as the labs’ work, with construction to begin June 3. But Johnson might tweak it so one lot is open at all times to maintain a constant flow of traffic for summer activities.

The north lot project will be completed by Aug. 12.

Johnson also referred to a third phase of a district access controls project. Efforts to develop an integrated security system following federal guidelines have been in progress since 2014. The district has been improving its single-point entries, surveillance, central storage of video files, emergency alert system and electronic access control.

Johnson said the third phase now is to strengthen door controls on school sites after which most of “the easiest doors at the easiest schools” were secured with electronic access control. Installations during this phase impact Bordewich Bray, Empire, Fremont, Fritsch, Mark Twain and Seeliger elementary schools, Carson Middle School and Pioneer High School.

The budget for the phase three project is $300,000.

Finally, in April, Steve West, director of operations, said CCSD is expected to receive 50 donated trees. The district will supply the mulch and dig the holes, and the trees will be planted at Empire, Fremont and Mark Twain elementary schools and both high schools. These sites were selected because they don’t offer as much shade.

“We’re very strategic on the placement of the trees,” West said. “We make sure we give them very simple drip lines (for water) and we piggyback on our current main lines.”