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Show Maintenance of School Buildings Presents Major Financial Problem This is the seventh in a series of articles submitted through the Iron County School District office. of-fice. The purpose of these weekly week-ly articles is to inform the public pub-lic and school patrons of the operation and condition of the school system. It doesn't necessarily follow that because a building is bright, 1 shiny and new, that a good educational edu-cational program is contained within. However, research and common sense tells us that modern, mod-ern, well-kept claasrooms and school buildings are conducive to , good education. Determining Usefulness It is often difficult to reach a decision as to when a building has outlived its usefulness or is in such condition as to render it unsatisfactory. It has usually been a rather general statement j that school buildings should be 1 designed and built for an expected ex-pected life span of 40 to 50 years. However, many variables operate to determine the actual life of a school, building. Among these are the original design whether it is flexible enough to accept j changes in educational organi-1 zation and design and new med- j ia which change quite regularly from decade to decade the actual ac-tual construction of the building; build-ing; the engineering, construction construc-tion and materials; the main- j tenance of the building involv-1 ing daily up-keep, and constant preventative maintenance; the use of the buildig as related to numbers and types of activities, I number of students, the amount! of time used. We could consider in detail each aspect mentioned above; however, let's explore only on-ly the latter briefly. Usage Determined In a junior high with 600 pupils pu-pils enrolled in a seven period day, we might come up with figures such as these: the once beautiful aluminum doors on the front of the building swing approximately ap-proximately 600 times each morning morn-ing to allow the students to enter. en-ter. These really swing more than this because this age of student will probably chase in and out of the building more than once prior to the begining of school, Once the students are in the building, bringing with them abrasives on shoes, smudges smud-ges on fingers, miscellaneous items such as gum, lipstick, etc., they move down the halls 1200 wearing feet. Classroom doors admit these 600 students to 600 student desks or tables where 1200 hands invariably make some impression as evidence of their attendance. If this school has a seven period day, this same pattern is multiplied by seven times. Counting the period per-iod before school, the six intervening inter-vening breaks during the day and the period immediately after af-ter school, a conservative figure would be that students had trod the halls to the classroom 4800 times during the school day. These same halls and classrooms have had nearly 2 million feet tred through them during the school year. In addition to the normal wear and tear of a building are the ; accidents and the malicious dis-truction dis-truction which goes on to some degree in every building which receives as much use and occupancy occu-pancy as a school. For example, the glass bill for the district is in excess of $1,000.00 a year. Perhaps it would be well to mention briefly the age and general useablity of the Iron County Schools. Cedar High School Completed in 1964. Excellent Condition Has a useable floor space in excess of five acres and more mechanical and electrical equipment than the rest of the district combined. This requires constant maintenance mainten-ance and up keep. Parowan Elementary - Completed Com-pleted in 1960 - This facility is new and requires only regular maintenance to maintain it. South Elementary - Completed This building is just beginning to require replacement of some original items and more extensive exten-sive maintenance. Maintenance Up North Elementary - Completed 1958 Excellent Condition. 1 in 1954. This building is now beginning be-ginning to require extensive painting and major maintenance. East Elementary - Completed in 1950. It is the oldest of the 'three Cedar elementaries. It is requiring constant maintenance, minor remodeling, and needs some rather extensive additions to up-date it and make it an optimum op-timum school plant. Escalante Valley Elementary It is a building which was moved in from Nevada in 1950. It has i been undergoing some extensive maintenance and needs a considerable con-siderable amount of remodeling to keep it in a condition for optimum op-timum learning. Cedar Junior High - A complex of buildings ranging in age trom 1916 to 1910. A new addition was built between two old buildings in 1955. The old west high school building dates to 1910 and the old West Elementary building was built in 1916. Many of the facilities are adequate, however, a rather extensive remodeling and replacement of floor coverings, cover-ings, etc., must be carried out in the near future if we are to provide pro-vide adequate facilities for junior jun-ior high children in Cedar City. Parowan High Parowan High School. This school consists of two buildings. The newer of the two was built in 1930 with an addition in 1953. This part of the school facility is still a good building and with adequate care could be utilized for many more years. The old yellow building, built in 1917, was a beautiful building when constructed. It had such modern concepts in it as a swimming pool (although it never held water), wa-ter), skylights, etc. This building build-ing now is not and cannot be considered adequate for student Most of the Educational facilities faci-lities in Iron County arc of excellent ex-cellent quality and with proper care and planning all should be expected to reach a life expectancy expect-ancy of 50 years. However, proper planning must be made to enable en-able the district to replace exist-j exist-j ing buildings as they wear out I and outlive their usefulness. |