Special meeting set for Thursday afternoon.
By: Lea Kahn
Bids for the renovation and addition project at Lawrence High School are expected to be awarded today at a special meeting of the Lawrence Township Board of Education.
Five separate contracts will be awarded for general construction, steel, plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilating and air conditioning. Work is expected to begin as soon as school closes next month.
The board will meet at 4:30 p.m. today (Thursday) at the conference room of the Lawrence High School library.
School district officials sought to award bids for the project last month, but the school board rejected them at its regular April 14 meeting because those bids exceeded the $18.5 million that was budgeted for the work.
When the bids were opened and tallied for the LHS project March 31, the lowest estimates for the construction, plumbing, electrical and other aspects of the project totaled $19.3 million. Presented with that information, the school board rejected the bids and directed officials to seek new bids.
Township voters approved a $37.2 million bond referendum in December 2002 to pay for the construction and/or renovation work at the seven schools in the district. Of that amount, the state contributed $9.6 million, leaving taxpayers to pick up the remaining $27.6 million of the tab.
The focus of the LHS project is on providing modern science classrooms, as well as more art and music instruction rooms. A new cafeteria also will be constructed, and the main entrance to the school will be relocated from the front of the building to the south side of the building, facing the parking lot.
Four new science labs and two new science preparation areas will be built in the addition that spans the Princeton Pike side of the building. The existing cafeteria will be renovated to provide space for instrumental and vocal music instruction areas, plus practice rooms. The existing instrumental music room will be reconfigured to create art classrooms.
A consumer science wing will be constructed at the rear of the school. It will include classrooms for the family and consumer science curriculum, plus the child development curriculum.
The school’s media center, located on the north side of the building, will be renovated and expanded. It will include the district’s TV studio and the Cisco Academy labs. The district made arrangements with the computer giant to train its students to find work in the computer technology field.