This school year, construction crews have taken over the campus. The 2019 CFISD Bond is in full effect as the building is being completely renovated.
Assistant Principal Les Sarles oversees any construction and maintenance done to the building. He says that the construction began immediately after students left for summer break last year, and it is set to finish in August 2025. The changes should improve the school drastically.
“They started the new tennis courts, the addition for art and theater, a field house by the football field, and a storage unit in front of theater,” Sarles said. “Also, they worked on the upstairs [by adding] new carpet, new ceiling tiles, new paint, new cabinets and things like that in the classrooms.”
Some of the other renovations will impact the students more directly. Important facilities have been greatly improved, such as the gyms which got new flooring and paint, while other changes are being enacted to enhance student’s learnability.
“You’ll be getting new desks in the classrooms,” Sarles said. “There will be the kind of desks that you can put together and make tables, so classes will be easier for students to work together.”
The most visible changes to the school, however, are taking place in the back. The fine arts area is obtaining various additions.
“So right now, I would say the biggest thing they’re doing is an addition in the back by the portables behind band,” Sarles said. “They’re adding a black box for theater to practice in, and then they’re adding two art rooms.”
Tara Mosier is mainly a drawing and painting teacher, and she teaches one period of digital art. She is a floating teacher, meaning she goes from class to class, and she is right next to the construction for two periods each day.
“No one has said it definitively, but art teachers have been told that there is a new art classroom being built,” Mosier said. “I have high hopes of getting my own classroom soon.”
With Mosier’s unique position in relation to the construction, she and her students witness the renovations firsthand. She says it comes with its positives and negatives.
“The negative would be just some days the sound is so loud that I have to literally stop talking on the microphone until the sound is done,” Mosier said. “In a positive way, all the hubbub that’s going on out there, the movement and the sound, it creates a lot of excitement for the students.”
Mosier says that the students are excited to see what comes from the renovations. Many of her students are dedicated to watching the transformation take place.
“They think it would be cool [for new art rooms to be built],” Mosier said. “And they would love to see their art teacher not have to move around so much and carry all the stuff I’m carrying all day long.”
Mosier believes the renovations provide more positives than negatives. For example, the construction gives some students encouragement to come to class each day.
“I have two students who every day, without fail, come in and go over to the window together,” Mosier said. “They comment on what they see has happened since the day before.”
The construction may allow students to watch the work progress, but it has also come with a few scares this year. In the first semester, there were two evacuations involving an unplanned fire alarm and a gas leak, both of which have been attributed to the construction.
“The fire alarm that went off was because of dust getting into one of the fire detectors, and they didn’t disable the alarm; it wasn’t a fire or anything,” Sarles said. “And then with the gas leak, they were digging back there, and miss-marked where the gas lines were, so they hit one.”
These may have been unexpected events to the students, but according to Sarles, they are completely normal with this type of construction. Either way, the construction keeps students on their toes.
“[The construction] boosts [the students’] own spirit,” Mosier said. “To hear all this movement and sound out there, and to see really cool machinery, [students are] not as lethargic; we’re just really excited to see a finished product.”
