001If you live in the Cornwall Central School District, you'll want to circle May 19th on your calendar. Because this spring, the district is once again asking voters to consider a new set of capital projects designed to improve our schools, support our students, and plan for the future. On the ballot, three propositions. The first would make over $44 million in essential infrastructure improvements across all district buildings without raising taxes. So, a new, you know, a new PA and fire system is super important. Health and safety-wise, it kind of seems like a no-brainer to talk about, but it's important for people to understand that, you know, in the 14 years that I've been here as principal, we've never had a fully functional all-of-the-time working PA PA system. Um there's always been glitches. Walter, um and our buildings
002and grounds department, as well as our IT department, work very, very hard to try to problem-solve and troubleshoot to make it work. But we really have been in some situations where we're counting on human runners to go back and forth and deliver messages, and that's not a safe and efficient way to do things. Um our announcements need to be clear. They need to be accessible to everyone who's in the building, regardless of the space you're in. Everybody should be able to hear if there's an emergency. Everybody should be able to hear clearly announcements. Um and that's a really important part of running a school is being able to contact and and communicate with everybody instantly. And then a fire alarm, obviously we want state-of-the-art. Obviously we want to make sure our students are safe and
003that it's functional all of the time and we're not worrying about it going down and breaking. One of the um most challenging parts of the job of middle school middle school principal, as far as logistics of day-to-day operations, is the arrival and dismissal of students and parents during the day um through our bus loop. The bus loop is the only way that parents and students and staff can access the middle school. So, we're looking at hundreds of cars every morning along with 30 buses that come in that have to unload students in about a 10-minute period um which leads to lots of uh near misses in the parking lot um for both staff, students, and buses. Um we have people out there who are trying to coordinate that, but there are buses that have to
004get places, parents who have to get places. Um we're constantly trying to get parents to make sure they're dropping kids off along the sidewalk so kids aren't walking in front of traffic. Um and in the afternoon, it becomes a little bit different because we have our buses that are lined up in our loop, but then also we have all of our parents who are coming to pick up who are lined up all on Main Street, off onto Curry Road, and we're constantly working with the police to try to mitigate that traffic problem as well as the safety issue of our students who who are then trying to meet parents on Curry Road or further down Main Street to avoid the traffic loop. So, by separating them out, we're providing a safer environment for the buses
005to come in and get out, do their job, drop the the kids off, get to their next run, but also for our parents to be able to drop the students off out a sidewalk without having to worry about crossing over any of the traffic. And it allows our staff and also the buildings and grounds staff who have bigger machinery and bigger trucks to get in and out of um this area without having to worry about students um or buses or kids walking through parking lots or across three or four lanes of traffic. The steps in the front, uh a lot of the bricks over time have aged. Uh the cement is giving out. Uh it is it's a pretty dangerous situation for uh people every week. We hold a Friday morning opening every every week
006during the months of by the end of September through June. We have grandparents and parents, friends, family all coming through that entrance. Uh, and the bricks again are kind of giving way, cement's giving way. We do hold recess every day weather permitting outside. We do have to keep younger grades off the steps for that reason. You know, they just can't navigate the steps and if the bricks are loose, obviously that can cause injury, you know, a fall. The older kids obviously we do allow on there but again it's always something that I worry about. So the the auditorium air conditioning issue has been something that um I was made aware of as soon as I became principal here which is probably going on almost 11 years ago. That's something that concerned me. The air flow
007in the auditorium is next to nothing. We do have three operable windows in the auditorium at the time. But our auditorium is used every morning for students to gather after the buses drop the students off. So they gather in classes. If the temperature reaches over 90° our auditorium heats up to close to over 80°. And now I believe it was 2 years ago there was a heat threshold that was put into place by New York State that will not allow students or teachers to be in an area that is above a certain degree and it's definitely above that if the temperature breaks and we have you know these you know, above 90° days. Once that auditorium heats up, it's very difficult to cool it down uh because of the brick. It's a brick building. It's
008over 100 years old. Um and the auditorium is also a classroom. Wood instruments such as a cello, violin, uh viola, they are very sensitive and can warp in very uh in in heated conditions. So, uh since the time I had been here, we have had to move our cellos and violins, etc. All of those uh orchestra instruments to the high school in June because they cannot withstand the heat uh that that auditorium holds starting in June. To learn more about the capital project, follow the Cornwall Board of Education on Facebook, find us on YouTube, or visit our website, cornwallschools.com.