Schools
Residents Tour Newly Remodeled Haverford MS
The renovation came in under the project's $62.5 million budget, the superintendent said.
When Haverford Township School Board President Denis Gray first entered 37 years ago, it was “smelly, inadequate” and had a “lack of classrooms,” he said.
“That was in 1975 and nothing really changed between 1975 and a couple of years ago,” Gray said.
On Thursday night, the Haverford Township School Board hosted an open house of the newly renovated Haverford Middle School on Darby Road in Havertown, which now features bright and airy remodeled classrooms with smart boards or LCD projectors; a technology lab filled with new Apple computers; a spacious library, and a band room with windows looking out on the new track and football field.
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The remodeling also includes a renovated auditorium featuring the original 1926 wood floors, which have been refinished, and a new cafeteria in a space which once housed metal and wood shops for the high school, Superintendent William Keilbaugh said.
“This has been three and a half years of real hard work to get through this,” Keilbaugh said.
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The renovation came in under the project’s $62.5 million budget, Keilbaugh told the Haverford-Havertown Patch. Keilbaugh said he did not have an exact number of how much the district had saved on the project.
“Like all buildings, in Haverford, the middle school was once the high school,” Gray said. “The middle school consisted of, quite frankly, seven different structures. We had material walls that were two feet thick.”
Haverford Middle School Principal Carol Restifo, who is retiring at the end of the school year, said, “It was quite an experience to live with what we lived with … a house is just a building. This is a home and now we have a beautiful building to match the people inside it.”
The open house began in the auditorium with a musical performance
by the middle school choral group Seventh Heaven, remarks from school board members and administrators and a ribbon cutting ceremony.
From there, the public was invited to tour 6th, 7th and 8th grade classrooms, the library and the technology lab. The tour ended at the cafeteria, where appetizers, pizza, cookies and lemonade were served.
Liz Timoney of Manoa, whose son will enter the middle school in the fall, toured the school with her family.
“Everything is so much improved from what we’ve previously seen,” Timoney said. “It’s beautiful.”
