CHS Science and Technology Construction Nearly Complete

Staff and students’ long wait for the use of the newly added and renovated Proposition S construction project is finally over at .

“The principal will tell you that it is the first time she has ever seen upperclassmen this excited to come back to school," said Chris Tennill, chief communications officer for the .

This project, in the making for more than two years, will wrap up in October with the completion of CHS theater renovations. Those include the addition of an orchestra pit and a gut renovation of all of the sound, lighting, fly areas and stage.

On Sunday, the school will host a public event to celebrate the completion of construction. This event will take place from 2 to 4 p.m. and will include a brief dedication ceremony at 3 p.m. Tours of the new three-story addition and the renovated spaces throughout the campus are available to the public.

Proposition S, a $51 million bond issue, made possible the additions, repairs and improvements to facilities at CHS, , , and . Clayton voters approved the proposition in April 2009.

“We were finished with the elementary schools and The Family Center last fall and had little dedications and celebrations for those specific projects back then," Tennill said. "But the high school was a much bigger project and a lot more involved, so it just finished up this summer.”

The high school project comprises a 60,000 square foot science and technology addition. The top floor is dedicated to science.

“Science was the underlying theme and the driving factor for this entire bond issue,” Tennill said.

While the existing classrooms were renovated for physics classes, new additions include science classrooms, flexible science labs for chemistry and biology, dedicated biology labs, a common prep room and chemistry classrooms. Each lab is fully equipped with state-of-the-art laboratory equipment, and each workstation has a dedicated iMac computer.

Students have use of two new greenhouses. A smaller one is located on the third floor, and a much larger one is located on the rooftop.

The middle floor of the new addition is dedicated to language and history, while the bottom floor provides learning spaces for pre-engineering, math, English, business, family and consumer science, journalism and the Greyhound News Network (GNN) broadcast studio.

The area dedicated to journalism includes a broadcast studio, six editing bays, a control room, a classroom and an area for the student newspaper. There, students learn how to write for broadcasts, shoot video with digital cameras, edit videos and report both from the field and studio. Students produce a six-minute news and feature program, “CHS in the Morning,” which is shown on Friday mornings throughout CHS. The students now have new equipment to produce the show.

Also new for CHS is the culinary arts room, which will be equipped with top-of-the-line stainless steel appliances and work surfaces.

“You take people on tours of Clayton High School and they know it by reputation alone," Tennill said. "Obviously we got great results (before the new addition and renovation), but now we have a facility that is arguable a collegiate-level high school facility.”

The school's heating and cooling system has been converted from two pipes to four throughout the original building to increase energy efficiency and indoor air quality.