After several construction delays postponed the expected summer move-in date for Marietta’s new middle/high school building, the facility’s completion date is inching closer.
According to Superintendent Brandi Naylor, the high school classroom portion of the building is complete except for a final cleaning and moving in the furnishings.
“The minor hold-up there is in the technology, including the telephone and intercom systems,” she said.
The HVAC systems, generator power, and security of the server rooms is next on the completion list. Once that box is ticked, the district’s technology director, Nate Jackson, will begin the tedious and time-consuming process of switching the entire district’s systems to run through the new high school office instead of the old one while back-feeding to the old office so that the district’s systems can remain operational until the move-in to the new facility is complete.
“I can’t say enough about how fortunate we are to have Nate Jackson working in our district,” Naylor insisted. “His incredible technical skill set, work ethic, and meticulous attention to detail are just amazing. That he’s worked so hard to figure out how to get all these systems up and running at what I know will be a high level – we’re just blessed to have him in our district.”
Furniture delivery for the building is scheduled for early December. Once the furniture is delivered, assembled, and installed, the school should be able to set and plan for a solid move-in date. After experiencing some HVAC delays, the middle school portion of the facility is not as far along as the high school, but should be too much behind the high school when it comes to moving in.
One bright spot, despite the waiting, is that construction teams have pushed to finish the commons area that attaches the facility to the gymnasium lobby.
“Pending an occupancy review, it looks like we will be using that for this Friday’s basketball game, and we’re keeping our fingers crossed and looking forward to that,” Naylor concluded.