THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 2, 1996 TAG: 9609020039
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY VANEE VINES, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: 65 lines
The kitchen and cafeteria in the new Northern Shores Elementary School will be ready when school opens Tuesday, a district administrator confirmed this week.
Some parents of children who will attend the Harbour View-area school had feared that it would not be able to serve meals anytime soon.
That won't be a problem, James Thorsen, the school district's director of facilities and planning, said Friday.
``The kitchen will be operational'' and the cafeteria also will be ready for students, he said.
Construction workers were at Northern Shores and several other city schools on Saturday.
Northern Shores will open on time, but it's not scheduled to be finished until later this fall. Work in the school's office area, for instance, will not be wrapped up by Tuesday.
A project to install new heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems at nine schools is ongoing, although most of the work has been completed and is ahead of schedule, Thorsen said.
That project also is scheduled for completion this fall.
All nine schools may be able to use the air-conditioning systems by late September, if there's a need to do so, Thorsen said.
But parents and staffers were told from the start not to expect air-conditioning immediately.
The heating systems, however, will be ready when the weather changes, Thorsen said.
The nine schools are: Booker T. Washington, Driver, the former Florence Bowser, Mount Zion, Robertson and Southwestern elementary schools and Forest Glen, John F. Kennedy and John Yeates middle schools.
(The former Bowser is now Oakland Elementary. Oakland's original site is closed for renovation. It will re-open next fall.)
The HVAC jobs - as well as roof replacements at Kennedy and what is now Oakland - left buildings a little messy this summer.< By the time school opens, all construction-related materials and equipment will be out of hallways, classrooms and any other instructional areas at the nine schools andat Northern Shores, Thorsen said.< The central administration, he added, also authorized payment of overtime to some school staffers so they could help get the buildings in shape by Tuesday. < If construction-related work still needs to be done at some of the schools after opening day - which will be the case at Northern Shores, and probably at Kennedy with some of the roofing work - targeted areas will be off-limits to students and the faculty.
And most of the work will be done during ``restricted'' hours, primarily on weekends and after students have gone home, Thorsen said.
In such cases, construction equipment and materials will be stored in places where they won't interfere with school operations or create hazardous conditions, he said.
With work still going on, some parents have questioned whether learning would be disrupted once school was in session.
But others say things seem to be under control.
``Although they've had weather delays and rain and those types of problems, things are looking pretty good,'' said PTA Council President Ellis Temple. ``I'm excited.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II/The Virginian-Pilot
Oakland Elementary School staff members, from left, Whitman
Chapman, Peggy Griggs and Angela Branem work to prepare the school's
library for the first day of classes.
KEYWORDS: SUFFOLK SCHOOLS AIR-CONDITIONING by CNB