By Leslie Gibson
Herald-Banner Staff
Rockwall ISD ‘s Phase I bond projects for 2006 and 2007 are expected to be completed and ready for approximately 2,500 students at each high school in the fall semester of 2009.
Everything from art and athletics to career and technology and theater will be given a space and a remodeling boost at both high schools, according to architect plans unveiled in the most recent school board meeting — with more than 77,000 square feet added to Rockwall, and 198,424 added to Rockwall-Heath, along with remodels in each school.
SHW Group Architects showed renderings of the proposed remodel and addition drawings in the special board meeting Dec. 5. The full board approved unanimously to allow SHW to go out for bid on the plans as shown.
Budgeted for Rockwall High School is $18,915,778 in construction and $4,424,000 in technology, for both renovations and additions.
For Rockwall-Heath High School, $26,272,610 is the construction budget, and $3,001,438 is the technology budget for additions.
Fine arts, including the just under-way orchestra program, will have new spaces at both schools.
High school orchestra programs should begin in 2009; elementary orchestras come on board in fall 2008.
To bring in orchestra at RHS, the existing band room will be given to the choir, and the existing choir room to the orchestra, with a new space for band.
Both schools will get piano labs.
Both schools will have dance studio upgrades or additions.
Both high school theater programs are being enhanced with new spaces.
At Rockwall High, a black box theater of 2,000 square feet is planned, with control booth, storage and a technical theater classroom.
In the Spring of 2008, the school board will review renovation plans for the Utley Building auditorium to become a 1,500 seat theater, and a performing arts center for the north side of the district, a project funded in the bond.
At Rockwall-Heath, a new three-story, 30,000 square foot theater to also seat 1,500 is planned. It will be attached to the east side of the school and face the student parking lot with three entrance archways, complementing and being designed upon the front view of the high school. The lobby, open to all three stories, will be filled with light.
The theater can be closed off from the rest of the school.
Behind the theater at RHHS, band will have a new hall of 5,000 square feet. Choir will take over the existing band room, and the orchestra will move into the old choir space.
Art, an established district program, is due facility upgrades, including remodels at RHS and an addition at Rockwall-Heath.
Plans are to build new spaces for curriculum and technology and for core requirements at both campuses.
Athletic areas are being improved.
Rockwall High additions will give the track and soccer teams new locker rooms in the multipurpose facility, and new wrestling and dance/drill team areas.
RHHS additions for athletics include spaces for wrestling and gymnastics and a weight room. “Track, soccer and wrestling are all sharing dressing rooms with other sports and the additional dressing rooms will allow us to ease the overcrowding we currently have and allow each sport to have a separate dressing room,” said Mark Elam, district athletic director.
“We have increasing participation in athletics in almost every sport,” he noted.
For example, Elam said girls basketball fields varsity, junior varsity, sophomore and two freshman teams. About 1,050 are enrolled in athletics at RHS, and about 900 at RHHS. Many of those letter in two or three sports, “We encourage dual participation,” he said.
Approximately 35 to 40 percent of the enrollments at high schools are participating in athletics, band, drill team and dance, he added.
Designing the renovations and additions is an “intense process”, Craig Drone, SHW senior project manager. “We met with administration and staff multiple times.”
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