Porter Township moves forward with repairing the buildings to maintain safe functional facilities for our students. Many of the buildings within the school district have some significant maintenance and repair needs that must be addressed. The Porter Township School Board has been reviewing a list of maintenance and repair concerns for about a year. In November of 2011, the Board approved the scope of work to be done at both the high school and the middle school campus for a first round of repairs. Each campus has several needs and below are highlighted the bigger portions of the repair projects.
At the high school, the Board approved a complete repair and replacement of the parking lot and some needed drainage work around the campus. The existing parking lot has been resurfaced and repaired, but there are issues with the surface continuing to crack and degrade. The causes of these issues are more to do with a lack of drainage and uneven settling of the sub grade of the parking lot. To repair the parking lot appropriately it needs to be taken up, proper drainage added, and the subsurface upgraded.
Also approved is the repair of the tennis courts. The tennis courts are used for the gym classes and the tennis team. There are significant cracks throughout the tennis courts. The courts have been resurfaced and we have experienced repeated large cracks. These cracks have been filled many times, but they keep reoccurring. Much like the parking lot, the issue is more with the foundation and this issue must be addressed to properly resurface and repair the courts. Continued filling of the cracks or trying to resurface would be a waste of money as the problem would reoccur. Again this is very similar to the parking lot issue.
At Boone Grove Middle School/ Elementary campus, the Board has approved repairs to the parking lot, repairing the 4th and 5th grade bathrooms at the elementary, and some significant drainage repairs. The drainage around the campus has caused several issues in the past that can be costly. When we have significant rain, the water has backed up into the elementary gym because of inadequate drainage outside of the building. The track and field also has been known to flood and have almost two feet of standing water. Both of these issues can cause more needed repairs that could be significant costs to the school district.
The cost of the repairs is about $2 million per campus. The Board hired an architectural firm and a construction management firm to prepare all needed estimates and documents for the project. The Board has requested that the estimates be as accurate as possible, but extreme caution to be taken so there are no cost overruns. The Board’s goal is to get the projects for less than estimated, but maintain a very high quality project to avoid any future issues. Attached you will find the original project list with cost estimates. You will also find a graph showing the small impact on the tax rate to our community. The Board feels this is a small investment to maintain and repair our buildings for our students. We must maintain a safe school campus and provide the best educational facilities possible for our children.
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