Awesome Learning Environments Start with Safe, Modern Campuses

In some ways, public education is like parenting. With parenting, all you have to do is raise your child. Of course, any parent reading this is thinking, “Yeah, simple. No problem. Easy peasy.” Well, education is kind of the same. All we have to do is educate students. How hard can it be?

As you might imagine, to do this right, local school districts must have hundreds of people who understand and care about all the ways we need to support kids, including creating an environment that is safe and conducive to learning. It reminds me of the meme “Be like a duck… be calm on the surface but paddle like crazy underneath.” This pretty much sums up a day in the life of a school district.

When students arrive on campus, everything is in good working order. Our schools are clean and welcoming. Students don’t have to worry about whether it’s safe to enter a classroom or use the facilities. This is as it should be, but it doesn’t happen without a whole lot of planning and a dedicated crew of skilled employees.

Recently, I asked our maintenance and operations director, Kyle Reams, to share his team’s work with our school board. The amount of effort and number of details required to keep school campuses in good working order–and meet our students’ evolving needs–is truly mind-boggling. Not only that, the work typically has to happen when students aren’t on campus, requiring projects to be squeezed into the hours or days when students are on vacation or between terms (the weeks before and after summer school).

With such small windows of opportunity, you might think the Maintenance team would just take care of the most urgent needs, but no, they do it all. Here’s a small sample of the work done this summer.

Moving mountains (well, offices)

As soon as school was out in June, the Maintenance Department, Information Technology Department, and almost all district custodians moved the offices of our Kelseyville Learning Academy, Welcome (Registration) Center, Student Services, and teachers from all school sites so we could deep clean, repair, renovate, and modernize school campuses. I don’t know if you’ve ever moved your office–all the furniture, your computer and tech tools, and all the other miscellaneous stuff you’ve acquired over the years–but let me tell you, it’s a major undertaking.

Monarch Program

Once everyone was moved, the work began. The Maintenance folks proceeded to prepare the Gard Street location for our new Monarch Program where young adults with special needs learn to be more self-sufficient. The facility includes a newly constructed laundry area and a full kitchen.

Kelseyville High School

Before summer school started, the Maintenance crew coordinated the installation of a ductless HVAC system to control the interior temperature of the 4,000-square-foot kitchen where our awesome Food Service Department prepares meals for all Kelseyville students. After summer school ended, the crew coordinated the installation of a commercial ice machine with the capacity to support all district food service needs. They also put the compressor/condensing unit outside to avoid heating up the interior.

In other parts of KHS, the Maintenance team worked with contractors to replace a 70-year-old, 4-inch sewer pipe with a new 8-inch sewer line. Our Maintenance team also replaced the asphalt on the main parking lot from the ground up (base rock, regrading, and re-compacting) to make it ADA-compliant. Finally, they renovated and modernized the staff bathrooms to match the already-updated, ADA-compliant student bathrooms.

Kelseyville Elementary School

At KES, they installed ADA-compliant walkways, 6-foot-tall fences, and black decorative gates, as well as a separator to prevent adventuresome preschoolers from running and hiding on the KES campus for fun. In our multi-use room (MUR), they installed a high-resolution projector and powered screen with an integrated bluetooth, blu-ray, and wireless microphone system for school assemblies, sporting events, movie nights, and more.

Riviera Elementary School

In the beginning of August, right before school was about to start, we realized that the EDMO classroom needed new ceiling tiles, paint, and carpet, so the Maintenance team rushed to get that done, too.

Transportation Department

For the Transportation Department, we purchased a new office trailer. The Maintenance and Information Technology teams, along with contractors, hooked up all necessary services, one of them being an electrical upgrade from a single 100-amp subpanel to a 3-phase, 200-amp service.

District Office

At the District Office, they began a renovation to make room for our expanding business office. We’ve been making do for a while, but now we’re converting the west side of the building from one office and one break room to two offices and a break room. Having adequate space will be great for our hard-working employees.

Tree Trimming

After years of drought, we also needed to trim back many of our beautiful trees to maintain their health–and to keep students and staff safe. So that’s done, too.

So Much More

These projects do not account for the thousands of other projects our Maintenance team completed. We are lucky to have such a skilled and dedicated group of folks taking care of our campuses, keeping everyone safe, and providing spaces where students and staff can do their best work.