New Flooring Decided for Junior-Senior High
L.R. Kimball Project Manager Brian Hayes explained each upgrade.
By Jonathan Weaver
Armstrong School District board directors have decided to have contractors make three change orders that total nearly $20,000 in additional cost.
Project Manager Brian Hayes reviewed the three project change orders – including the flooring, revisions to the tech ed portion and upgrades to the audiovisual system for additional connections – that needs approval from the State since it totals $19,000.
Hayes said that even with the change orders, school directors have spent less than half of their $1.5 million contingency fund.
“Even though we’re coming back month-to-month with change orders here or there, in the grand scheme of it, the project is still under budget,” Hayes said.
Reynolds Construction On-Site Managers Rochelle Fennell and Stephen Reckhart showed school directors samples of upgraded flooring in October.
About 150,000 square feet of school hallways and classrooms were designed to utilize basic vinyl composition tile (VCT) – which has grown softer after asbestos was removed and could crack causing the state of Ohio to not even allow the material in their schools.
“They recommend a minimum of 3-5 layers of wax on it to protect it – which is a big undertaking to clean all the rooms,” Fennell said in October. “Based on our experience, you could have a concrete floor looking beautifully, and after you put VCT down, the next day you will see every blue mark and imperfection – especially in the corridor.”
Facilities Director Bill Henley said staff members currently clean flooring with two coats of seal and four coats of wax.
“No matter what you do, after the first day of school you come back three weeks later, it just looks like you didn’t do anything to those floors,” Henley said. “It doesn’t take long
Because of the problems, Fennell said an enhanced vinyl tile (VET) or a luxury vinyl tile (LVT) has been more-utilized lately. VET would cost about a dollar more per tile and LVT about $1.20 more.
School directors did decide to upgrade to the VET.
“The main difference is the contractor is saying that VCT has 125 PSI strength, when you go to VET it rises to 400 and when you go to LVT, it goes to 500PSI,” Fennell said. “We think it would be a great improvement and upgrade to your school, and that you’ll be much-happier with either of these products.”
LVT tiles also would not have to be waxed by maintenance staff members, but there aren’t as many colors to choose from.
“If you start looking at material cost and labor cost with what you put into these floors now, you would get a pay back with this stuff in about 3-4 years,” Henley said. “We use a tremendous amount of money.”
Board President Joseph Close justified the changes.
“Being that we had some money in the contingency to fund that since prior to that, trying to get the price of the building reduced, we cut some material costs. Flooring is a big item in the school, lot of wear-and-tear on that.
“It’s money spent in the right direction,” Close said.
Lobby railings on the second floor will also be raised six inches amid concerns.
At the school board’s reorganization meeting held before the open caucus, Board Directors Close and Christopher Choncek were unanimously re-elected to serve as Board President and Vice-President, respectively.
Close also serves a Lenape Technical School Joint Operating Committee member (president the past few years) and also accepted a three-year reappointment.
Close said his biggest task is the continuation and completion of Armstrong Junior-Senior High in Manor Township before the 2015-16 school year, as well as continuing to make educational improvements to district students. He hoped for more discussion also on the Riverhawks $10 million athletic complex
School directors have spent about $47.5 million to-date on the school project
Armstrong School District | jweaver December 5, 2014
By jorn jensen, December 5, 2014 @ 8:59 AM
Who missed the VCT tile in the original quote? Mr. Henley sure knew what his costs are to take care of current floors - perhaps he should have been included in the original flooring decision.
By Elderton Parent, December 5, 2014 @ 7:30 PM
Kimball didn’t do their homework so now we have to pay for it. Hey Joe, you were right about that train…woooo woooo
By localtaxpayer, December 6, 2014 @ 7:07 AM
Everyone I talked to that visited the new Armstrong Central School said its awesome!
By sickofpayingforit, December 8, 2014 @ 11:09 PM
Elderton Parent-
Agree with that comment. We pay a premium for all of these engineers and architects in ASD. As a matter of fact, we ASD tax payers are probably solely responsible for some of those people’s entire amassed fortunes! Overlooking something like a flooring that is not feasible is a pretty big one, no?
Local Tax Payer-
I am sure that building is very impressive. Anything new in Armstrong County is going to be revered as awesome, mostly because this area is so financially depressed, we don’t get to see much of anything new around here. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to go see it as I cannot afford to miss a minute of work with all of these high taxes that are extorted from me…..lol.
Jorn-
C’mon man. You are asking for accountability in a public sector enterprise?? I thought you were smarter than that! We still have mostly all of the same managers even after the state told us all that our test scores are terrible, generally speaking…..