ROARING SPRING — Spring Cove School Board members were presented with a host of maintenance and capital projects for the 2022-23 school year, but what projects get completed depends on the availability of funds and how important each is to the operation of the district in the coming year.

During Monday’s meeting, the Building and Grounds Committee showered the board with a host of proposals, including a remodel of the high school art room, which was formerly the shop room.

The Building and Grounds Committee meets with the school board early in the calendar year to go over possible projects for the upcoming school year and determine if anything should be added, Superintendent Betsy Baker said.

The committee then receives quotes for the projects and compares them to the final budget to work out if the district has the funds to complete all of the projects or if anything needs to be adjusted, she said. The district completes its proposed budget in May and final budget in June.

At Central High School, the proposed projects are to replace the girls locker room lockers, add a ramp at the back of the school that is ADA compliant, remodel the art room, replace the art room garage door, replace some classroom doors, upgrade the auditorium’s sound system, paint some of the old tile throughout the building and replace the faucets in the school’s restrooms, according to Lucas Runk, supervisor of buildings and grounds.

The district has been replacing a few classroom doors each year rather than all at once because costs have shot up, Baker said.

“We’re going to spend some more time looking at that and see which ones we really need to replace,” Baker said.

She also stated that the district may want to put off some of the proposed projects until it conducts a facility study scheduled for next year.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, a facility study must be completed and accepted by the school board within five years of any major construction project if the school district wants to be reimbursed by the state for construction costs. A condition of reimbursement is that all school facilities be brought up to prevailing educational standards and current construction standards.

“We could start it at any point, but with a business manager that only has four months left, I don’t think there’s much point in starting that process,” Baker said. “I’d rather have the new business manager on board from the start. We have plenty of time to do that next year.”

At Spring Cove Middle School, Runk said the district is proposing an upgrade to the auditorium sound system, replace the wooden gym doors and select classroom doors, replace the motors in the basketball hoops system, pour a concrete pad for the dumpsters behind the school, install pavers in the second courtyard and upgrade the stair climber that gives handicap access to the school’s upper and lower floors.

The Martinsburg Elementary School building saw more proposed projects than Spring Cove Elementary, with Runk saying the district hopes to seal the school’s parking lot and repaint the lines, replace the flooring in the multipurpose and music rooms, replace the threadbare entrance rugs and fix the damaged exterior drive-up poles.

“Kids kick the poles,” Runk said. “If you look at the one next to the tennis courts, you’ll see it’s wrapped right now so that you can’t see it.”

Meanwhile, the Spring Cove Elementary School would only need its parking lot lighting upgraded to LEDs.

Proposed athletic projects include refinishing the Bean Hill gym floor, the final three Bean Hill doors and placing concrete pads beneath the soccer, track and baseball field bleachers.

Projects drawing from the district’s cafeteria fund include replacing the serving line and purchasing two new reach-in coolers for Martinsburg Elementary.

Miscellaneous projects the district proposed include disposing of chemicals, cleaning the fence row at the high school and replacing the skid-steer at the high school and Martinsburg Elementary campus.

Runk stated that the campus’s current skid-steer is from 1991 and is the main snow plow for the high school, so if it stopped working, the school wouldn’t be able to open.

“It’s going to be a trade-in, so we’ll get money for the one we have,” Runk said.

Funds for the projects the district decides to undertake would either be attributed to the district’s capital projects fund, if the reserves are available, or would be included in the regular maintenance budget, Baker said.

Mirror Staff Writer Rachel Foor is at 814-946-7458.