"Excruciating" is a good word to describe the renovations at Sturgeon Composite High School, jokes student Evelyn Kostiniuk. Now in Grade 11, she and her friend Megan Bleau haven't known a moment when the school wasn't a construction zone.
"It's an inconvenience," she says, speaking in one of the school's just-renovated science labs.
"We come home and our pants and our shoes are covered in dust."
Originally announced in 2014, Sturgeon Composite's $35-million renovation project has been in progress since spring 2015. Students are learning lessons amongst missing walls, buzzing drills and 70-odd construction workers.
It's definitely been a challenge, says music teacher Darwin Krips, whose band room has been under construction all year.
"The order of the day is patience," he says – learning to live with construction and looking forward to its finish.
"This is going to be an incredible school," Krips said.
Total rebuild
Principal John Baldassarre gave the Gazette a tour of the school last week. This renovation will have touched every part of the school by the time it wraps up this September, he noted.
One of the most radical transformations so far has been the front lobby, which used to be a hallway with some concrete planters. Baldassarre says this part of the renovation is way behind schedule, as it was supposed to be finished last year.
"We wanted to open this up and make it an open, inviting school environment, give it a more campus kind of feel," he says.
The lobby is now a wide-open area with many tables, resembling a food court. The pyramidal skylights have been replaced with a clerestory (a raised portion of a roof with many windows) for more natural light. The front office is now in the lobby instead of two turns down the hall, and has glass walls similar to the ones in St. Albert Place. Classrooms and the library next to the lobby will also get glass walls they can move to create one giant open space.
Although there are still a lot of exposed ducts and holes in the walls, students now have new lockers and revamped welding, construction and automotive labs, Baldassarre says. The large gym also reopened in September after a year's absence with a new floor, change-room and LED displays. Still to come are the revamped foods lab, four new portables, new basketball hoops and bleachers, and a bigger fitness centre.
Grin and bear it
All this construction has kicked up a lot of dust. Bleau, who has asthma, says it's sometimes been tough to breathe as a result.
"Last year it was so dusty it was even hard to see."
Noise has also been an issue, Kostiniuk says. If someone's drilling next door, the teachers often have to wait until it stops so they can be heard.
Baldassarre says the school and work crews have made a concerted effort to protect student safety during the renovations. Air quality reports have found no health problems in the school, and crews have been very responsive to concerns, breaking out fans and HEPA filters within minutes of complaints.
Still, there's only so much you can do in a construction zone.
"There were times when I'd walk through this hallway and I'd see a haze," he says.
Krips says he's had to be super-flexible to teach music, putting dust covers on everything after class and keeping all but a handful of instruments in storage when not in use. Some, like the piano and drum line, he can't use at all due to a lack of space.
While he'd love for the renovations to be done tomorrow, Krips says he's already seeing some results. He has a window for the first time in 16 years, for example, and an actual storage and practice room (instead of the lumber rack and guitar closet he used to use). He also praised construction crews for working with teachers to schedule noisy work around their classes.
It was great to see the big screens and the new floor in the gym when playing basketball last fall, Kostiniuk says.
"It made me excited for when the whole school would be finished."
