Summer construction heats up at Shaw

From the outside, Shaw Avenue School looks just about the same, but the inside is a very different story.

Valley Stream’s largest elementary school is undergoing major construction this summer, as a new heating system is being installed in the building. Ceilings are ripped open, classrooms are bare and the hallways are lined with furniture that is covered in protective plastic.

The construct ion is part of a $2 million capital reserve project approved by District 30 voters in May 2012. New heating and ventilation units will be added to more than 30 classrooms, bathrooms, offices and other instructional spaces in two wings at the school. It will replace the original radiant heat system.

Most classrooms in Shaw Avenue School, which opened in 1950, have coils embedded in the floors which provide heat. That system will be abandoned, and heating units will be installed along the outside wall in each room.

To install those units, holes had to be cut in the brick work to pull air from the outside into each room. New standards from the state Education Department require that fresh air be brought into classrooms, and these regulations must be met whenever a school upgrades its heating and ventilation system.

That is one of the reasons district officials chose not to replace the radiant heat system. In addition to providing no fresh air, it also would have required digging up the floors in every classroom to replace the 63-year-old coils.

Those coils will remain, but will no longer be used. “The old system will stay dormant,” said Lisa Rutkoske, the assistant superintendent for business.

Installing the new system means running about one mile worth of new pipes. These pipes, which will carry hot water, will run from the boiler room, above the hallway ceilings and into each classroom. There, the pipes will drop down along the outside wall to feed the ventilation units.

New casework with shelves will be built along the outside walls to hide the pipes. “I think it’s going to look very nice,” Rutkoske said.

Two new boilers are also being installed. Russell Costa, the district director of facilities, said construction will finish in August, before students come back to school. “We will be ready,” he said. “It’s a lot work. It’s a big project.”

The heating season starts on Oct. 15, he said, so district officials will have sometime to get the new system up and running once school opens.

The only parts of the building untouched by this project are an eight-classroom wing in the back of the school, which was built in the mid-1950s, and the library wing built in 2003.

The library is getting its own facelift. New carpet has already been installed and the entire room has been repainted. The blue carpet, which was ripped in several spots, has been replaced by tan carpet tiles. Also gone are the white walls, covered with colors that match the new carpet.

“When you’re doing the carpet, it makes sense to paint at the same time,” Rutksoke said, noting that all of the furniture had to be moved out of the library.

A small room will be added in the corner of the library for small group instruction. A glass partition wall will be put up. Rutkoske said only one row of shelves will be lost, but there is still plenty or room for books in the rest of the library.

Behind the school, a new fence has been put up. Rutkoske said the old fence, which was 21 feet high in some places, was no longer sturdy. It is now 12 feet high adjacent to the blacktop play area, and six-feet high directly behind the building.