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(AUSTIN DALY/EYE OF THE TIGER)

Roseville High School and district administration continue to develop plans for how the school with use their $13 million share of Measure D funds.

The list of probable projects at RHS include constructing a new gym, resurfacing the pool deck, converting the 800 wing fully into a Project Lead The Way Engineering space, updating bathrooms to become compliant with the American Disabilities Act regulations, updating aspects of the Hanson Field stadium, and a series of smaller updates to current facilities.

The construction of a new gym will determine how and when Roseville High School spends the rest of their funding, according to Roseville High School Principal David Byrd.

“What we don’t want to do is do a bunch of smaller projects, then all of a sudden when we are ready for the gym, ‘Oh there isn’t enough money for the gym,’ That’s why we got to get what a new gym is going to cost,” Byrd said.

After the estimated price for building a new gym is resolved, RHS will start working on some of the other projects, and on updating existing facilities around the campus.

The time of completion for the gym is still undetermined, and according to Byrd, construction on the new gym wouldn’t start until the middle of next year, or until the year after.

“The small gym is absolutely atrocious. There are leaks sometimes,” JV basketball player Bernie Graves, who frequently had to practice in the small gym, said. “Whenever it rains there is condensation build up on the wall.”

On Feb. 27, athletic director Emily Dodds, assistant principal Jason Wilson, varsity football coach Larry Cunha, and PE teachers Greg Granucci, Melissa Stevens and Cindy Simons met to discuss the possible distribution of Measure D funding in regards to the athletics.

“It would literally benefit every single student here as every single student has to go through PE,” Dodds said. “But it would also benefit sports because we could have a projector, they could take gameday tapes, go in there, break down film, and do all of that. The bare minimum we are going to replace is locker room, mat room, gym.”

Hanson Field renovations may include updates to the snack bar, repairing the scoreboard, a seating expansion, and a new bathroom. Currently, spectators on the visitor’s side of the stadium have to walk across campus to use the Foyer bathrooms behind Moeller Gym

Errecart hopes the “hometown feel” isn’t lost with renovations to the stadium and the campus at large.

“I hope whatever renovations happen, they don’t take away from that hometown feel,” long distance track coach Josh Errecart said. “You look at the new schools that are around here and you get a lot of the more modern, kinda cookie cutter stadiums. Bleachers, and that stuff. I am not sure if that feels as hometown, Friday nights kind of football.”

According to Byrd, a majority of the projects the district will attempt at RHS are on a much smaller scale than the new gym. Smaller scale projects new carpeting in the band room and library.

“I really appreciate the gesture of new carpets because those carpets are probably over ten years old,” saxophonist Alyssa Abbott said.

The top priorities for classroom renovation include rooms in the 400, 500, and 600 Wings and the Art Wing.

“The 500 and 600 wing, they are two of the older wings on campus and I think they, to a varying degree, rooms in there could use some revitalization,” Byrd said.

Byrd hopes to replace outdated equipment in those rooms with new equipment, and introduce projectors to those classrooms.

“There are rooms in there that still have chalkboards,” Byrd said. “I want to get rid of all the chalkboards and put whiteboards in all of those. So, the 400 and the 500, it’s worth it for us to get to modernizing those.”

On top of modernizing classroom resources, Byrd wants to open up the wings’ architecture and refurbish the interiors.

“Years ago they dropped the ceilings down and took out some of the natural light. I would love for that to go away and open those rooms back up, make them feel a little bit bigger and I think the flooring in some of those [newly redone] rooms needs to be redone, “ Byrd said.

A large piece of reconstruction that is still in the preliminary stages of planning is the conversion of the bottom 900 classrooms into dedicated lab classrooms.

“We are looking at, ‘Hey, it might make sense for us to transform that other room into a science room. We would like to keep the science classrooms all kind of close to each other and that’s just good for the school,’” Byrd said.

The classroom selected for renovation would have to be downstairs due to the need for gas in science experiments and labs, and the infrastructure in the upstairs rooms is not ideal for science classes, according to Byrd.

The RHS pool may be resurfaced this summer. The resurfacing of the pool deck is connected with other spending because issues that must be repaired immediately may be brought to attention during the resurfacing according to Byrd.

“The pool deck needs to be resurfaced, that’s a given. Once you start resurfacing that stuff, sometimes you can find other problems structurally that have gotta be repaired, so that could open us up to, ‘Hey, let’s replaster the whole interior of the pool. As long as we have to redo some pipes, let’s redo all the pipes,’,” Byrd said.

The pool deck is also a safety concern to the RHS teams that use the pool.

“A new pool deck would make it far easier to host tournaments and just all around easier to walk around on,” varsity boys water polo player Peter Edmondson said.

While the funds for the conversion of the woodshop room into a Project Lead The Way engineering space are not explicitly Measure D funds, Measure D frees up funding and allows the school to be more liberal with their spending, according to Byrd. The conversion of the space was already planned before Measure D was passed.

The PLTW engineering space was originally expected to be completed by the end of the summer but because Measure D enables the school to add more to the space, it’s going to take longer, according to Byrd.

“The second phase of the conversion is to paint the interior and figure out what equipment is in the space,” Byrd said. “[The next phase is] really a big part of what a reimagined engineering space might be and aesthetically making it look a little differently inside.”

The new timeline sets the date for completion around next spring.

“The increasing of space for the engineering class is a much needed improvement to the program,” PLTW student Aidan Carrigg. “This upgrade is certainly needed for the engineering class’s capacity to continue to grow.”