Although the high school was rededicated on Sept. 27th, some parts of the building are not finished yet.

While there is a consensus that the renovated building is a huge improvement over the old structure, students have noticed cracks in the hallway floor, leaks in the English wing and blue tape on the walls. The auditorium is also in disrepair and inaccessible.

Minor Issues

Anyone passing through the building will notice the cracks in the floor of the new wing. According to Assistant Superintendent Robert Hardis, these are minor problems.

“It is to be expected,” Hardis said. “They should not grow any wider and they should not be chipping [or] flaking. We anticipated it and it’s ok. This doesn’t mean there are structural flaws. If it is a larger crack then we deal with it, but it is still expected.”

Blue tape can also be found across the building. Hardis explained that these indicate minor problems on a “punch list” of items to be completed by the construction crew.

“[Blue tape] indicates to ‘look here’ because there is some small thing that needs to be fixed,” he said. “ [Construction workers] have been working on them. Even as recently as last Tuesday we [met] to get through all of [the] items… [on the] punch list.”

Somewhat hidden from plain sight are the leaks that have been occurring in the English wing since the beginning of the winter. English teacher Peter Harvan has arguably had the worst of the leaks, with water damaging his ceiling in at least three places.

“You can hear the drips coming down from the roof onto the top of the ceiling tiles,” Harvan said. “Luckily it is not happening quickly, otherwise I’m sure that it would have been a bigger problem than it is.”

Harvan has been told to put a tarp on his desk overnight in case water does seep through the ceiling.

Harvan’s room is not the only room to have suffered water leaks. The English office and English teacher Evan Luzar’s room have also had leaks. Both Luzar and Harvan’s rooms have not had water penetrate the finished ceiling, while the English office has had water reach into the room itself.

Board President Mitch Luxenburg is concerned about the leaks.

“Absolutely.” He said, “When you have a project like this it is not entirely unexpected, but any problem we have is absolutely concerning.”

The fire drill that took place on Thurs. Jan. 9th was not caused by a leak. It was caused by a frozen pipe bursting in the science dept. office.

The Auditorium

The auditorium is the largest problem remaining since the completion of the construction. According to Luxenburg the Board of Ed. has been aware of the situation for quite a while.

“We became aware of the auditorium shortly or around the time school was opening.”

Hardis says that auditorium might be finished in the next school year.

“We are hoping it will be done some time early in the next school year,” Hardis said. “[By] November. We’ve been given a huge range [of prices] by the architects…that project will be between 2-4 million dollar renovation.”

Last summer when they began to update the auditorium, sprinklers needed to be installed in the auditorium.

“One of the things that needed to be done was to [install a] sprinkler system in the auditorium.” Hardis explained. “When it [the auditorium] was built, these sort of things were not required.”

This was incredibly difficult because of the ceiling that the auditorium has. The “cavernous roof” as Hardis described it needed to be laid with multiple layers of sprinkler heads. To do this they needed to tear out the wall section behind the seating area to properly install the sprinklers.

Workers also had to remove asbestos.

“They needed to tear out the wall and ceiling material,” he said. “Because there was asbestos in the materials that of course demanded that we abate it in order to prevent it getting into the workmen’s lungs and the duct work throughout the school.”

Hardis also explained that by the end of the summer, the space that was once the auditorium no longer felt empty.

“At the end of the summer, [the auditorium] was functional, but could not have obtained an occupancy permit.” he said. “…It looked really really bad.”

Not having an auditorium this year impacts several BHS extra-curricular activities, such as the drama club and White & Gold.

Freshman Neil Kelly, who portrayed Nick Carraway in BHS’s production of The Great Gatsby, said that for Gatsby it was not essential to have an auditorium, but for later productions it will be.

“It didn’t affect [Gatsby] greatly because Gatsby is a show that can be done in a smaller space and can [be made] more intimate,” he said.  “The problem comes when we want to do a larger- scale show, like a spring musical, and we don’t have a big enough space to do it.”

Looking towards the Future

While students and teachers are enjoying the new building, many are concerned that some parts of the school are not yet completely functional. Some, like the English teachers and drama students, hope they finish in time for next winter.