A group of West Plains High School students is gaining valuable hands-on experience while helping make the campus safer and more accessible to students and staff who require the use of a wheelchair.
The project, which attaches the high school library to an annex east of the main campus that houses music classrooms and administrative offices, will allow students to travel between the annex and the library without having to go outside.
Eighteen students total, in morning and afternoon classes, have been working on the project, which is hoped to be completed before Thanksgiving break.
"They have been learning a lot of good hands-on stuff; it's a little better if they see it," building trades instructor Chris Reese said. "They have been doing everything from cutting two-by-fours to laying block."
Specific skills learned thus far have involved removing and replacing floor tiles and ceiling tiles, laying concrete block plus putting primer on it and painting it, minor electrical work and the changing out of light fixtures, and the installation of a hallway ramp compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The ramp installation required jackhammering the floor, welding class students will make the handrails for the walls along the ramp, and a double door will be installed between the annex hallway and the library.
Painting the walls will finish the project.
The project is expected to cost about $25,000 total, and is being paid for out of the district's capital improvements fund.
Another project recently completed by the building trades classes was the renovation of a house on North College Street, purchased by the district and across the street from the main campus. The students outfitted it with a reinforced server room the houses the hardware associated with the district's internet server.
Past building trades classes have constructed entire houses, some of them along North College Street and others along North Howell Avenue, near the campus. Reese said the classes hope to get back to that in the future.
