Pickens High Conversion Passes OSF Inspection

Changing the former Pickens High School into the new home of Pickens Middle School students cleared a significant milestone last month.

The project passed inspection by the Office of School Facilities, according to district spokesman John Eby.

Eby took me on a tour of the school Friday afternoon.

New school construction and the renovation of existing schools are being done with safety at the forefront.  

“From Day 1, kids will be safer in the new school,” Eby said.

All visitors will be funneled to the front office.

“The thing that they’re trying to install inside all the schools … is a buzzer (at the entrance, to where you buzz in and tell the receptionist why you’re here,” Eby said. “And the receptionist can see you while you’re talking to her, then they let you in. That’s what we’re trying to go to for secure entries for all the new schools, is a buzzer system like that.” 

The doors leading beyond the office into the school itself “are locked all the time,” Eby said.

That will prevent visitors from getting into the school undetected.

“Anybody entering the school goes through the reception area here,” Eby said.  “Nobody can be going in through the side doors.”

“It’s just a commentary on the way the world has changed in fifty years, since a lot of the old schools were built,” Eby said. “It was a time when people didn’t think of a school as a target. I think then the biggest safety concern would be, ‘How many different ways can kids get out, say, in a fire?’

“You still have to maintain that concern,” he continued. “You still have to have the multiple exit areas. It’s just that they all have to be set up to be locked all the time, outside this one door.”

School staff are “thinking in a security mindset, all the time,” Eby said. “Sometimes security and convenience are at odds.”

While you can never predict a given attack, you can take steps to impede an intruder – while police are en route to the school.

“Anything you can down to slow an intruder can save lives,” Eby said.

The school’s old gym has been transformed into the middle school’s new cafeteria.

“This is my favorite part of the building,” Eby said. “I call Grand Central Station because of the windows got up there. When the sun is shining at the right time of day with the right light, you get those beams of light coming in through those top windows. It looks really nice.”

Acoustical chevrons in the cafeteria and choir and band rooms will help keep sound from drifting into other areas.

The orchestra room at the existing middle school is “half the size” of the new orchestra room. The conversion is also providing the orchestra with some much-needed storage space.

Eby said his father recently retired from the music department at Bob Jones University.

“They had a brand-new fine arts building, university-level, and their band facilities were not better than this,” Eby said.

Cafeteria equipment is “100 percent new.”

Some rooms and facilities are a mixture of old and new, taking advantage of items such as flooring “that were built to last,” Eby said.

The conversion program is giving a new look and new life to a building that has been serving the district and students for generations.

“It looks like it was built yesterday,” Eby said.

Teachers will move their supplies in over the summer.

“They’re more than safely on pace to be in here in time for school to start,” Eby said. “I think everything in this building will be done before we’re done with this school year.”

Last week, Bob Folkman, district building program director, told board members the building program is “94 percent complete.”