School Officials Tour New Goodyear Building

Eleven pairs of feet trudged into the main entrance Wednesday afternoon, with not a hard hat in sight.

Eleven people, including many members of the school building committee, took a tour of the building at this stage of completion. Patrick Saitta, president of Municipal Building Consultants, Inc., who represents the city on the project, led the tour.

Hard hats were required during the construction phase of the project. Those days are over.

Furniture continues to arrive at the school; students’ desks have been assembled in several classrooms.

All the furniture should be in next week, Saitta said, by the end of July.

All building systems are up and running, he said.

On the ground floor, in one of the kindergarten rooms, Saitta pointed to the skylight and the cubby area and child-size fixtures in the restroom, all within the classroom space. The classroom lights go on automatically, he explained. As the room gets darker, more lights come on.

In the hallway, he pointed to the MDF (medium density fiberboard) panels on the walls and a ceiling detail.

Besides all the building details—the colors and textures of the walls and floor, for example, the school has that new building or new car smell.

Ear-wise, the music room has a small, separate practice room, both with a row of sound-baffling panels. The cafeteria has the panels, too.

Outside the cafeteria, School Committee Chairman Patricia Chisholm pointed to the artificial turf on the play field. She loves that surface, she said, because it will not get muddy after rain.

In the corridor between the art room and boiler room, a mural will be added, Saitta said.  In the boiler room, Saitta pointed to the high-efficiency boilers.

In the gym, Saitta said he is waiting for word from the insurance company on how much of the floor will be replaced after water from an air conditioning unit leaked when it was first turned on onto and under the gym floor.  If the work starts Monday, it would be done by Aug. 19, he said.

Items with blue dots on them, such as some wall panels, need to be fixed, Saitta explained.  So do two several cracked floor panels in the art room, he said.

On the second floor, Saitta pointed to the library and media center and, along the main corridor, the student cubbies. On the third floor, older students have lockers, he noted.

Among the tour-goers was one man for whom the building will become home. Clapp-Goodyear School Principal Christopher Heath will be moving to the new Goodyear School.  Each time he’s walked through the new building, he has become “more and more excited” for the students and teachers who will be working in the new Goodyear School.

“It will be a wonderful place for learning,” he said, “and a real tribute to the city.”